Priority: Shepard
by elle45
Summary: The Normandy crashed on an unknown jungle planet, and Shepard is presumed dead. But she came back from the dead once, and Kaidan refuses to sit around not knowing for sure. But the mass effect relays are broken, Edi isn't running the Normandy, and no one knows for sure if the Reapers are dead. Set right after the end of the game, if Shepard destroyed the Reapers. Strong language.
1. Are you there?

Thank you for reading. I do not own any of the Mass Effect characters or any aspect of that fictional world.

Kaidan stared down at the spare, cold metal bar in his hands. It took Tali less than ten minutes to make official memorial slabs for Anderson, Edi, and Shepard. It hardly diverted her from her more vital repair tasks at all.

As the only Spectre on board, and ranking Alliance officer, he'd been in the comm room since the crash, trying to hail someone. Anyone. So far he'd mostly been patching the broken pieces of the comm system together. Edi was much more vital to everything on the ship than they'd realized, and now Edi was gone. Joker was practically catatonic with shock and grief. A tiny, horrible part of Kaidan was satisfied to see him like that. He was trying without success to smear that awful little voice into nothingness, because taking any satisfaction from another man's grief was just wrong. _But_ , that little part of him argued, _if Joker hadn't been so damn stubborn Shepard wouldn't have died the first time. . ._

The first time. Jesus. Because now there was a second time.

Liara had come to get him from the comm room. She'd been fairly gentle about it, but very firm. The sun hadn't even set on the day they began by trying to wipe out all the Reapers, and the crew wanted to officially mourn their dead so they could get on with living. They all knew that Anderson and Shepard were on the Citadel. And the Citadel exploded. It exploded with such force that their ship had been shoved through Heaven knew how many mass relays before crashing on this jungle world. No one and nothing could have survived the destruction of the Citadel.

Moving briskly along was all very proper and soldierly. He'd gotten through his speech on Anderson with barely a crack. But now, now he was holding a cold steel rectangle with her name on it. Commander Jamie Shephard. It wasn't even her proper full name. Just what they'd always called her.

He couldn't decide if using the name she'd chosen was good or bad.

"Shepard was the most resilient person any of us ever knew," he said. He had to start somewhere. Had to cut into the silence before he lost it and started crying or some other damn fool thing. "She was orphaned at a young age back on Earth, but out here in the stars we were her family. She had a reputation for being ruthless, after what happened at Torfan. But the lives that were lost under her command that day weighed heavily on her. From the moment I met her, she never missed a chance to save a life, or make a bad situation better. She threw herself into self- sacrifice after self-sacrifice like she was trying to make up for Torfan. But we know she. . ." his voice trailed off. _She left the galaxy a better place._

He tried to swallow, but his throat and mouth were dry. He was a marine, for Christ's sake, he could make it through one funeral speech.

Just not this one.

"Kaidan?" Liara's voice was soft, unpressing. She'd grown a ruthless streak after Shepherd died the first time, but she was still terribly deferential.

Both times, when Shepard died, she'd ordered him out of harm's way. And he'd gone. Because he respected her. Because he was a soldier, and he was under her command. Because to do otherwise would be to risk her in a more grievous way, like Joker had three years ago. Last time, there was a memorial service but no body. Last time, he'd lost himself in work and closed off. He'd accepted she was gone, because they'd all seen the wreck of the Normandy. Not having a body to grieve over was just a risk of space travel.

But they were all wrong. All of them except Liara, who found her body and delivered it up to people who could bring her back from the dead. Liara had believed when he couldn't.

The only thing keeping him from insisting they go on a search and rescue mission right now, with all their limited food and fuel and their broken ship, was the weight of command. It sat heavy on his shoulders, in his chest, making it hard to breathe. He couldn't act rashly or out of panic or fear or grief. He had to make logical decisions based on facts. Or else, people might not make it. Already Dr. Chakwas had voiced a concern for Garrus and Tali, because the machine to make their dextro food was broken. He needed to get that fixed, or get them food. He needed to get his ship moving. He had to check for other survivors. He needed to make sure the Reaper threat was gone, and reorganize the resistance if it wasn't. All of Shepard's old responsibilities lay on him now, because there sure as hell wasn't any one else who could or would do it.

He looked down at the placard in his hands. Everyone was tense, silent. Watching to see what he would do. No doubt if he sounded truly insane they'd lock him in the cargo hold and someone else would be in charge.

"I know the damage to the Citadel was catastrophic," Kaidan started, feeling his way. "But the damage to the Normandy three years ago was catastrophic, too. Shepard is too important to too many different people to just be left like so much debris. Unless she was scattered to atoms, someone is going to find her. And that someone better be us."

"Kaidan," Tali said, "No one could have survived that. Not even Shepard. That blast was huge. I want her to be alive, too. But wanting . . . it doesn't make it so."

"I'm with Kaidan," Garrus said, relaxing by inches. "Even dead, someone will want to collect Shepard. As long as I have breath in my body, that someone is going to be the people who love her."

"We can't go for the Commander until we have the FTL drive back online," Vega said, gesturing at the walls of the ship.

"Right," Kaidan said, sweeping the placard behind him and coming to a parade rest. "We're going after Shepard." There. Heart's deepest desire stated in a firm voice, just like the decision came from some reason or logic. He'd told her he couldn't lose her again and he'd meant it. So he hadn't lost her yet. Not until he saw her dead and rotted.

"Right now, this is a rescue mission," he continued. "We may learn new information that turns this into a recovery mission. But right now, this is a rescue mission." He looked each crew member in the face, pausing. "Tali is in charge of getting us up and running again. Everyone is detailed to helping her, except for Specialist Traynor, Joker, and Dr. Chakwas." Joker rolled his eyes, his defensive sneer firmly in place. Kaidan knew losing Edi was going to hit him really hard, and he needed Joker to be more functional than that. "Joker and Dr. Chakwas will be evaluating our food and medical needs and attempting to keep us all alive long enough to get back to civilization." The doctor would watch over Joker better than anyone else could. They were part of the original Normandy crew. It was the best he had for now.

He paused, to see if this sudden reversal in direction was going to draw any protest. When it didn't, he said "Everyone, you are dismissed to your duties. Traynor, with me."

He started off to the comm room. Liara followed him. She looked like hell, still in her bloodied armor from the battle for Earth.

"You're going to get the comm system working again," Liara said.

"It's going to be a challenge without. . . without Edi," Traynor said. She wasn't doing well either. "But I think I can do it."

"I'm going to help you," Liara said. He decided not to argue. Actually, she could be useful. She knew people as the Shadow Broker that he'd never met in his more official channels. She waited until Kaidan turned to look at her to tilt her head and raise her eyebrows at him. Live long enough, and skeptical worry doesn't even need words. She was still wearing her red armor, from Earth. He would have been too if his hadn't been wrenched off him in the med bay. Some of the blood on her side was his.

"Look, if she somehow survived that blast there's no way we can make it back in time," he said. All of the things that had been circling his mind since the crash came spilling out. "But we don't have to be the ones to pick her up. I have a lot of contacts with the Earth military, and you're the Shadow Broker. Between us we have to know some folks who have working ships back on Earth, who can mount a rescue mission to the Citadel. We just need to get in contact with them."

"That's why you're prioritizing this over fixing the rest of the Normandy," Liara said. He grimaced. Shepard would never have been caught in such a blatant tug of war between emotion and duty.

"We have to figure out where we are, comms would help with that. And we have to know if it worked, if the Reapers are gone. . ." He took a deep breath. "But yeah. Yeah, that's why."

"Good." Specialist Traynor didn't seem bothered by that revelation in the slightest. "This is one of the most advanced communication systems in the galaxy. A prototype. It will be difficult to get it working without Edi."

"When I was running my operations from your XO room, I had to tweak the communications a little. To make them harder to trace." Liara smiled in memory. "Edi gave me the tutorial on this system, but I insisted on doing a lot of the modifications myself. To be sure that I could lock her out if need be."

Kaidan was almost diverted to ask what Liara could possibly have been up to that she thought Edi would object. But he was too focused on the important part. "If Edi gave you the tutorial, you know this system better than anyone else on this ship."

"Yes," Liara said, calling up her omni tool. "That is correct."

"Excuse me," Specialist Traynor said. "This happens to be my area of expertise."

"I said almost anyone," Kaidan said. Traynor rolled her eyes and bent to the communication system. She'd never much liked him. He hadn't forgotten the "frozen pyjak" she served him at Shepard's party- the drink made from whatever was on her spill pad. But if she could get this communication array working, she'd be his new favorite person.

Most ship communication systems relied on a tight beam communication relay from ship to ship, and then messages could be carried through the mass relays on physical ships. The quantum entanglement communication array was much better now that the mass relays were broken. Probably broken. The blast that drove the Normandy to this garden world was certainly big enough to have broken the relays.

The world narrowed to individual coding sequences. He wasn't the best at this, but he knew enough to get by, and he had Liara and Traynor to learn from right in front of him. The hardware was mostly intact. Bless Joker's quick reflexes. It was the software that was in shambles. He was getting a real sense of what Edi had done, and been, for this ship. Now that she was gone the software for the ship was practically eviscerated.

A throat cleared loudly behind him, and Kaidan jumped. He looked up at the door and noticed for the first time that everything was bright around the edges. His head was heavy with pain. For some reason the migraines didn't bother him so much when he was focused on something.

Oh, and this was one of the nauseous ones. His stomach was in full blown rebellion, verging on guerrilla warfare. Perfect. He'd managed to totally ignore the complaints of his body while he was focused in on the software. It was Dr. Chakwas standing in the doorway. She had water packs in one hand and nutrient packs in the other, and she was looking expectantly at the three of them.

"I gave you five hours before I came in," she said. She held out the water first, both Kaidan and Traynor took it gratefully. Liara waved her off. "I thought whatever it was you were trying to accomplish would take at least that long. Major, how are you feeling?"

"Fine, Ma'am," he said reflexively. Dr. Chakwas narrowed her eyes at him. He took a drink of water. Without flinching. Years of practice pretending his migraines were just a minor inconvenience paid off. He generally didn't try to hide pain from the good doctor, though, that was just a dumb plan.

But if she offered him pain meds right now, he would probably take them. Self control could only get him so far. The pain in his head narrowed the whole world. Pain meds would knock him right out. It had to be at least thirty six hours since he'd woken up on the day that they were going to start up the Crucible. He couldn't sleep until he knew someone was searching for Shepard. She could be bleeding out slowly somewhere right now. She could be crouched in the ruins of the Citadel waiting for rescue, her air slowly running out.

"Major, it was barely ten hours ago that I was patching up your internal bleeding," Dr. Chakwas said. Kaidan opened his arms and smiled reassuringly.

"Give me a scan, doc. If I'm bleeding, I'll go to Medbay with you. Otherwise I really need to finish this here," Kaidan said.

Dr. Chakwas keyed up her omni tool and waved it in front of him. She frowned at her readings.

"Am I bleeding again?" he asked. She probably could tell that his migraine had started up. Water and food would help. Even if it was military rations.

"My temporary patches seem to be holding fine, yes," Dr. Chakwas said. She lowered her arm and stared at him. Her thin lips pressed together to form a pale line. He realized that she must be worried about him. But he didn't have room in himself to care, just now.

"I need your help with something, Doctor." Kaidan took the nutri packs from her and set them down between Traynor and himself. Traynor took one immediately. Dr. Chakwas came almost to attention. "I need a stimulant. This needs to get done. As gentle as you can manage, so I don't drop like a marionette with its strings cut when they wear off. But I need something a few kicks stronger than coffee. Can you get me something?"

"In my medical opinion that's a very bad move," Dr. Chakwas said. He shook his head. Or he started to. Gingerly.

"Every minute counts," Kaidan said. Dr. Chakwas nodded. Reluctantly. But she'd do it. "I need you to keep an eye on Joker, too."

Dr. Chakwas snorted. "Both eyes. Aye aye, Major." Then she left. Kaidan took a few bites of his nutri pack. His stomach hated it, but he knew from long experience that his head would feel better sooner if he ate.

"I did not wish to be rude to the good doctor," Liara said. "But I believe we have the comm running. Well, nearly. We will have to find some way to seek out signals. But Specialist Traynor can do that in thirty minutes or so. First, we should give some thought to what we will say when we get someone on the line."

Kaidan looked at her for a long moment, food forgotten in his hand. He could get Hackett to search for Shepard, yes! But they had so much to figure out, to plan. And Liara looked like he felt.

"Are you sure you don't want to go grab yourself a shower? Change of clothes?" Kaidan gestured at her nutri pack, which she hadn't even looked at. "Something to eat?"

"No, thank you. This will be faster." Liara turned to the comm system once more. This wasn't focus. This was something else.

"Liara," he began, but she abruptly turned her omni tool off and laid her hands flat on the surface of the interface. Her shoulders were trembling.

"I love her too," Liara said. He blinked, rocking back a little. "I'd never touched the mind of anyone before, not until Shepard. I thought, maybe, we could. . . but none of that is important." She keyed up her omni tool again. "What is important is that she might be alive out there. And if she is, every minute we waste is a minute she's alone and probably in pain. I won't let that happen."

Kaidan didn't know what to say. He rubbed his temples, willing the pain to retreat so that maybe his thoughts could churn out words instead of mush. Specialist Traynor had her gaze firmly locked on the communication array. She was doing her best to pretend she wasn't in the room.

"Did you two ever. . . did you ever think maybe she loved you back?" Kaidan said. No, wait, he wasn't going to say that out loud. That was surely not the right way to phrase that.

Liara turned to look at him, scorn in the quirk of her lips.

"Oh dear, Major. I had no idea that sharing would be a problem for you," she said. Then she turned back to her work. He clenched his hand on his knee until both his fingers and his knee ached. His knuckles were white. He took a deep breath, then another. She was messing with him. And he probably deserved it. The asari had guts, telling him how she wanted the woman he loved. Wasn't it supposed to be kind of hot, thinking of two women? Not that the asari were women, exactly. So why was he just breathing black rage instead of picturing. . . no, no, picturing it made him more angry. He had to get a handle on this crap before he turned into a biotic cave man.

"She was already in love when I met her," Liara said. "Not that she thought of it that way. It's hard, you know, to reach into a living mind and see only what you meant to see. If I were older, more experienced, maybe I would have seen less. But here we are."

Kaidan filed that thought away for some more private hour. Maybe some more private hour when he knew whether Shepard was alive or dead. Yeah, otherwise even thinking about this conversation was going hurt worse than the most severe migraine. For now, they had a job to do. It didn't matter what Shepard felt about them, either of them. It only mattered that they both had a good reason to keep trying even though logic said Shepard had been dead for hours.

"I'm not surprised you love her," Kaidan said. He leaned his head down, trying to stretch the tension out of his neck. It didn't work. "She's the most capable, relentless, surprising person I've ever met."

"Capable and relentless. That's what passes for a complement in human relationships?" Liara asked. He laughed, softly. That he could laugh at all was a minor miracle. Even thinking about Shepard lightened his heart.

 _Please, please don't be dead._

"In marine relationships. Sure," Kaidan said. He leaned back against the wall, rolling his shoulders. "You're right about planning what to say. It's got to sound logical."

"Like with the crew," Liara mused.

"Yeah," he said. "Maybe we talk about how important she is to morale. Or maybe they think that devoting the manpower to search for other soldiers would be better. Maybe we talk about what's due a commanding officer. A hero."

"I was thinking something more pragmatic," Liara said. "Maybe about her role in the treaties with the rachni, the turians, the geth, the krogan."

"Yeah. Everyone was so nervous about the krogan and the rachni starting another war," Kaidan said. "We can say that she's instrumental to maintaining those treaties. Hell, it might not be a lie."

"No, not a lie," Liara said. "I think I only have one agent on Earth, and I'm not sure about her access to functioning spacecraft. Our first call had better be to Admiral Hackett."

"Old Hackett the Hatchet," said a voice from the doorway. Kaidan turned to see Joker, holding a box. Joker handed it through to him. "Dr. Chakwas says there's a stimulant in there and a pain medication."

"What, and I'm supposed to just take a fifty fifty shot over which one I'm going to get?" Kaidan asked. Joker shrugged.

"They're labelled. Probably. I take it you guys have the comm system uplinked."

"Just about," said Traynor, much too brightly.

"No traces of Edi in there?" Joker asked, quietly. Kaidan took a deep breath, and Joker waved his hand as if to dismiss his own question. "Of course not. Better that way. Something about that explosion killed her. Not me crashing her. Right?"

"I do not believe it would be possible to damage hardware in such a way that it would also damage Edi," Liara said. Which was good, because Kaidan just did _not_ have a good response for this. Joker nodded, then turned away.

"Let me know what Hackett says. Until then I'll just be sitting around being useless and trying not to break any bones," Joker said. Kaidan opened his mouth to say something reassuring. But nothing came out, and before he could think of anything Joker was gone. He tapped the box against his thigh, thinking.

"I can have Admiral Hackett up on vid comm as soon as he replies," Specialist Traynor said. Kaidan stood up straight. Folded his arms across his chest. He wasn't sure how long it would take, but he planned on using every second of that call. He wasn't going to be off somewhere slouching and waiting to be called. What if they only got two minutes of connection? He had no idea what the situation was on Earth.

Honestly, that ought to bother him more. His students, his mom, everyone he served with was either on the Normandy or on Earth. But it was like worrying over Shepard was so big and important it drowned out everything else.

This was taking forever. He tried a breathing exercise that was supposed to help with the migraines. Then he got tired of that one and started another. Over the years he'd picked up dozens of little tricks and tips and like half of them had to do with how his oxygen got carted around.

"Here he comes," Specialist Traynor said. Liara closed her eyes as if in prayer, or profound relief. Or marrow-deep exhaustion. She was practically swaying on her feet. Longest damn day ever. Maybe Kaidan hadn't noticed before because he was swaying, too.

Admiral Hackett's holograph appeared in front of them, a blue grid with an old man's face. He was wearing a crisp, clean uniform. That had to be a good sign. Admiral Hackett was on Earth, and surely he'd look a little the worse for wear if the fight was still raging there.

"Major Alenko! Dr. T'soni. What is the status of the Normandy?" Admiral Hackett asked. Kaidan saluted, realizing belatedly he was still holding that box of meds.

"Stranded on an unknown planet, repairs promising," Kaidan said. He _really_ wasn't here to talk about the Normandy. "What is the status on Earth?"

"You don't know what happened?" Admiral Hackett shook his head. "Major, she did it. The Reapers are gone. Every husk, brute, and gigantic death machine dropped dead as soon as that blast hit them. I don't know what the status of the rest of the galaxy is yet, but Earth is secure."

Something cold and hard in the pit of his stomach loosened. No matter what else happened, at least this all hadn't been for nothing.

"What about Shepard? Is there any word?" Kaidan asked. Admiral Hackett looked away, off to the side. Someone or something that had some information about Shepard? Kaidan clenched his teeth on all the ways he wanted to scream at the man to hurry up and answer. Two seconds wasn't an unreasonable pause. Really.

"Not as yet. Anderson and Shepard are both currently presumed dead. The Citadel seems to be in pretty bad shape. No one up there is answering any comms," Admiral Hackett said. "I know that isn't the news you want to hear, Major. I'm sorry."

"We need to get a team up there," Liara said. Kaidan was honestly impressed she'd waited this long to chime in.

"Dr. T'soni is right. Top priority right now has to be recovery of Shepard. She's the only human that the krogan and the rachni are going to listen to. If the Alliance doesn't recover her, someone else will. Maybe someone like Cerberus. Again." Kaidan took a deep breath and sent a small, quick prayer into the ether for eloquence. "Shepard brokered most of the treaties involved in getting the Crucible up and running single handed. Without her, those treaties might fall apart. And even if. . . even if she is dead, without a body no one will ever be sure she isn't going to pop up in the middle of a crisis again. She came back from the dead once before."

"I agree with you, Major. Ma'am," Hackett spared them each a respectful nod. "But right now we don't have a good way to get up to the Citadel to check. A lot of our equipment was damaged by the blast that took out the Reapers."

"I believe I may have an answer for that," Liara said. She began typing furiously on her omnitool. "When your species was first contacted by the Turians, your war efforts were based entirely on your own technology. You did not yet have access to the technology of the Citadel. If I remember correctly there should still be some ships from that time period in storage in Siberia. And some others outside of Porto Vetho in South America. Those might be the best bet." Liara held her omni tool up, and a series of numbers began flashing. "These are the coordinates. Can you record this, and get someone who specializes in old tech to go get those ships operational?"

"I know they're old," said Kaidan, before Admiral Hackett could object. "But if you can get someone who is already in the area to go get those ships running, and then co-ordinate a rescue team from the people who are in South America, you could have someone up at the Citadel within a few hours. Every minute counts. If Shepard is alive, she won't be for long."

"You've both been serving under Shepard too long," Admiral Hackett said. But he had a rueful smile on his face. "No holds barred, full speed ahead, no obstacle too great. It's like none of you believe in the word 'impossible.'"

"Please, sir," Liara said. "This may be the only way to avoid galactic war. Now that the Reapers appear to have been dealt with old factions may become restless. Treaties made in the middle of a war are hardly the most stable agreements."

"It's a good idea, and I'll do it," Admiral Hackett said, holding his hand up as if to ward her off. "Stop talking apocalypse to me. I think we've had enough of that."

"Shepard would have been in the center of the Citadel, near the Crucible's operations hub," Kaidan said. "The arms of the Citadel are a low priority. Your team will need life sign scanners and as much medical and recovery equipment as they can stow without compromising their ability to stay up in the Crucible. They should be equipped for a search that may take several days." _Though if it takes that long, she won't be showing up on the life sign scans at all. Assuming that she isn't dead already._

"Thank you, Major. I do know how to run a recovery operation." Admiral Hackett said, dryly. Kaidan didn't even flinch under the Admiral's sarcasm. He really had been serving under Shepard too long. "I will begin the search immediately. The last thing we can handle is another galactic war. You're right. Alive or dead, we need Shepard. Hackett out." Then his blue image blinked out of existence.

"I'm surprised he wasn't already looking for her," Liara said. She slumped down, rubbing her head with her hands. He should say something in the Admiral's defense. He should.

"No one values our Commander enough," he said. "But then, I'm biased. Think you are too. Get some rest. It's been a long day."

"You know I'm not under military authority, right?" Liara said, raising her eyebrows at him. "You can't order me around."

"No," he agreed. "But a good idea is a good idea."

"You get some rest too, then. Major," Liara said. He nodded, carefully, trying not to jostle his aching head. Liara left, and he started stretching. Maybe if he could just ease this murderous tension out of his bones they wouldn't hurt so much.

She was right. He needed rest. If he was just a grunt he could take the stim and keep going until he dropped. But a commanding officer needed to always have enough left in him for the next emergency. So he took the pain med instead. He didn't want to go up to the Captain's cabin. He didn't think he could face it. And if he went down to the crew quarters he might be too far away to get to the comm system in time to hear any updates. He walked to the cockpit, instead, and sat down in Edi's chair.

Edi. Without her here, there was no one to tell him if Admiral Hackett came back up on the comm. Or if anyone else did. Now that they had the system operational it wasn't like the Admiral was the only person who could call. Kaidan spent a few minutes making sure his omni tool would chime as soon as anyone at all tried to hail them. The ship was silent as the grave, still as death. He'd barely leaned his head back on the head rest before he fell asleep.

She woke to a world of pain, and something past pain. This was what it felt like dying the first time. Her lungs were stuttering, her whole torso shivering with every breath. She couldn't feel anything on her back, on the left side of her body. A scream bubbled out of her but it wasn't even audible.

Maybe none of the past few years had actually happened. Maybe she was still on a table in a Cerberus lab. It only hurt a little more than it had the first time she woke up. Not when Miranda had woken her over the comm system because they were under attack. The first time, when her dead tissue was only half fixed.

 _"Jamie Shepard. First human Spectre," Kaidan said, walking out of that building on Horizon. "You're in the presence of a legend. And a ghost."_

Even memory hurt. Everything hurt. If she was dying, shouldn't she be floating off in a wave of endorphins or something? It seemed cosmically unfair that she couldn't even black out to block the pain.

She tried opening her eyes. But maybe they were already open. Trying to move them didn't do anything, anyway. She gritted her teeth and started trying to move piece by piece. Her right toes wiggled. Or they told her brain they were wiggling. She didn't know which it was without being able to look. But her left was just nothing. Maybe she'd lost her leg. And. . . she tried to wiggle her left fingers without success. Maybe she'd lost that arm, too. She tried to swing her right arm over to check, but there was something between her right arm and her left arm. Maybe. . . rebar? Sticking right through her.

She retched, but mercifully nothing came out. She had to think on something else. Focus on something else.

Because she was probably the last thing alive on this Citadel.

 _I'm going to die alone. In the dark. Painfully._

That seemed right, actually. Two deaths alone in the dark was just about enough dying to make up for living through what she'd done at Torfan. She'd sent her soldiers to death, and they in turn had haunted her continually for all the years since. She was sure they were waiting just on the other side of death's door to accompany her to hell. And Thane would be there, calm as still water. A good companion on the trip into the abyss.

Not just Thane, either. Most of the people she'd grown up with died years back. She could see them all again. God knew they were headed to the hot place same as her. And Ashley. Though Ashley was a good theist, and she might have ended up somewhere else entirely. Mordin. Legion, maybe.

It was just as well, really. She didn't know what she would do with a world at peace. Settle down, have some kids? Not bloody likely. In the vids that was always the hero's reward for living to the end of the story. Get married, have some kids. Maybe if she were the guy in that equation that would be more appealing.

Then again, if she had lived she would have gotten to spend night after night with Kaidan. If he still wanted her. She was an old soldier and she knew damn well that what you say right before a suicidal charge and what you say when you're facing down five decades together is not the same thing. Learned that one as a gunnery Chief, early on.

She tried to shift, or scream, or do anything. But she was pinned in place. Unable to move. Barely able to breathe.

Maybe she was already dead. And this was Hell.

A great roaring rumble started in the blackness off to her right. Like a Leviathan, come to swallow her up. Her nerves were shattered with pain. If she could have cried, she would have. Instead she just listened to the howling dark waiting to find out if anything could be worse than this.


	2. Just Stay Still

Thank you for reading! I don't own any Mass Effect characters, plot lines, or anything.

 _"No matter what happens," Shepard said, coming up to cup his face in her hands, "Know that I love you. Always."_

 _She didn't care about the bullets flying all around them. Her eyes were so dark they were almost black, staring into him like they were willing him to remember her. Because she didn't think she was coming back._

 _And neither did he._

 _There was only one thing to say. Down at the bottom of the pit where all their hopes for any kind of future were being shredded in a hail of bullets, only one thing mattered._

 _"I love you too," he said. And she turned to leave. But one of the shots caught her, right in the neck. She was bleeding out. Liara dropped him, going to Shepard immediately and using her biotics like a kind of field bandage. He limped over to the cargo bay comm and told Joker to get them out of there, to get them all out of there._

 _And when they lifted off, her eyes met his. She was hurt, he was hurt, the whole battle might be lost. But no one was charging off alone today. Her mouth opened like she was going to say something. But all that came out was a chiming bell._

Kaidan woke in the cockpit. His headache had dulled to manageable levels. And his omnitool was chiming.

Because Shepard hadn't been shot, she'd made it into the Citadel. And now he was waiting to find out if she was alive or dead.

He'd thought that getting into an armed standoff with the woman he loved was a hell of a thing to happen in a soldier's life. But _wishing_ she'd been shot in the neck was surely worse.

Hell, they had medigel. She would have been fine. And she'd be here, right next to him. The Reapers would probably still be wrecking Earth, though.

This day was a special kind of bad. He'd go crazy if he started thinking about what -if.

Kaidan lurched out of the co-pilot chair, and jogged to the Comm room. His mouth tasted like a varren had molted in it, and he had a whole collection of aches and pains to go with the headache.

He answered the call without looking to see who it was. Admiral Hackett's image formed, and he breathed out relief.

"Sir," he said, nodding in respect. "Is there any news?"

"That's why I'm calling you, Major Alenko," Admiral Hackett said. "My rescue team just contacted me to say that they have found a section of the Citadel center that remained sealed when it exploded. And there is a life form in there. Unfortunately, that's all they know."

Hope seared through him, more crippling than any kind of despair. Kaidan swayed on his feet. When Shepard died the first time, despair had kept him numb. He was totally unprepared for what hope was doing for his heart.

But she needed him. He had to get it together. _Right now_.

"How are they going to get her out without depressurizing the sealed area?" Kaidan asked, his brow furrowing. "Shepard wasn't wearing her helmet when she went into the beam. It would be unwise to assume that she has a supply of oxygen."

"That's exactly the issue that I wanted your help with, Major," Admiral Hackett said. "My team doesn't know how to proceed."

With difficulty and after several slow blinks, Kaidan decoded that as 'I didn't want to make a rash decision and piss off the last standing human Spectre. Who has my best ship.'

That was new. That was new, and it was awesome. If Hackett was checking in before making decisions about Shepard's rescue he could make sure they were made right.

Kaidan pulled up his omni tool and contacted Tali. "Admiral Tali'Zorah, please come to the comm room on the double. A rescue team based out of Earth may have located Shepard but they've encountered a snag that you have unique insight on."

"When did you. . . what is. . . I will be right there," Tali said. Kaidan flinched in guilt. He hadn't told the crew that they'd scrambled a rescue team. He hadn't kept them apprised at all. Shepard would never have done that. He was keeping them in the dark just because he was too busy.

Well, no longer. He was going to fix that. Soon.

"Admiral Tali'Zorah is a spacer with experience in every kind of depressurization emergency." Kaidan made sure to keep using her title in case Admiral Hackett started to feel like he was asking an ensign to solve his lofty problems. "She is used to working with substandard equipment, too."

"Are you calling my fleet substandard?" Tali said behind him. She was wearing her full biotainer suit. Garrus, in full armor, came through the door behind her. Had no one on this blighted ship actually taken a rest period?

"Admiral Tali'Zorah," Kaidan said, glossing over any and all references to her home fleet, "We may have found Shepard. There is a section of the Citadel center that is still sealed, and the rescue crew that Admiral Hackett scrambled found life signs inside. They need to find a way to get in without depressurizing it."

"Or sending rubble off in all directions," Garrus mused, almost like he was thinking out loud.

"Admiral Hackett, does this ship have a functioning drive core?" Tali asked, dismissing everything else from her attention. Admiral Hackett shot Kaidan a look. The resolution on his image wasn't clear enough to be sure, but it seemed to be exasperation. Kaidan flinched in guilt again. _No leaving the crew in the dark. Got it._ His headache was getting worse again.

"It never had a drive core. This ship is twenty-four years old. It was one of the last we made during the contact war, before we had access to mass effect technology," Admiral Hackett said. "It relies on manual docking and locking procedures. In order to get close to this particular part of the Citadel, the rescue team needs to manually lock onto something in part of the rubble. The crew has some machinery that can shift rubble, but they're concerned that any attempt to move rubble will depressurize the area. They've locked down the life signs to a ten-meter square area. But because they're trying to scan through debris they can't get a better grasp of where she is."

"What makes them think this is Shepard?" Garrus asked. He was leaning against the doorway, out of frame for the vid connection. But still audible. Admiral Hackett didn't seem surprised to have an audience.

"We honestly don't know who it is. Or even what species. We can only hope," Admiral Hackett said. Garrus grunted, but let it go.

"I don't know of any way to keep the area under pressure without a drive core," Tali said. "A ship with a drive core could extend their mass effect field out past the ship to encompass the rubble. It would be like working in a bubble, but stable. For hours. But without a drive core. . ."

"A mass effect field can prevent depressurization?" Kaidan said. "I've never tried that. But it makes sense." Perfect sense.

"If you can't use tech, look to the crew," Garrus said. Kaidan had never wished in his entire life to be able to teleport so badly. She needed someone just like him, he could save her, but once again he was just not where he needed to be.

"Are there any biotics on this crew?" Kaidan asked. Admiral Hackett pulled up a data reader, then nodded.

"There are two. Also a doctor, two engineers, a pilot, and a handful of soldiers who have previously done spacer rescue and recovery. It's the best crew I was able to scramble at the last minute. I had to pull most of them out of support roles, because the best front line troops were all here in London," Admiral Hackett said.

"Is there a way to speak to the biotics?" Kaidan asked. "And the recovery experts. And the engineer? Does their ship have the capability to talk on this frequency?"

"I'll send their contact information right away, Major," Admiral Hackett said. "We are currently having to operate on a lot of old hard line tech but I was able to send a mobile comm unit up with this ship."

"Thank you, Admiral Hackett," Kaidan said, coming to attention. Admiral Hackett nodded, then blinked out of his blue existence.

"What the _hell_ , Kaidan," Garrus said, as soon as the three of them were alone.

"Is this what you've been doing this whole time?" Tali demanded. "Sitting here waiting for someone else to rescue Shepard?"

"Whoa," Kaidan said, holding up his hands. "As soon as the comm link was up, I contacted Admiral Hackett and talked him into scrambling that search party. It's the best I could do."

"Glad to see you haven't gotten your head up your ass, Alenko," Garrus said. He gestured toward the comm system with one clawed hand. "Now are we going to contact that team, or what?"

 _What would Shepard do?_

"Not yet," Kaidan said. "We need ten minutes to brief the crew and gather ideas. It was a mistake to keep you all in the dark before. I'm not going to mess this up because I was in too much of a hurry to get all the intel I could." Shepard always stressed the importance of intel. Tiny pieces of seemingly irrelevant information could make or break a mission. _But I'm the man who's always been two minutes too slow to save her_. "But we need to make this a quick meeting. Can you two gather everyone in the mess hall? And I do mean everyone. Quick as their feet can carry them. Wake people up. This is a three bell alarm."

"Why the mess hall?" Tali asked, hands on her hips.

"Coffee's in the mess hall," Kaidan said. If they'd been Alliance he would have said one of the old in-jokes about naval coffee. But somehow he didn't think they'd get the punch line.

He stopped by the cockpit on his way down and got that stimulant the Doctor had given him earlier. He took it without hesitation. It would make the headaches worse, play hell with his stomach. Better than being a dull stone right now.

Vega, Joker, and Liara were already in the mess hall when he got there. Vega had made coffee already, like a good Navy Lieutenant, and handed him some before he even asked. It was thick and black as tar. Just like his old Sergeant used to make back when he was an ensign.

"Thanks," he said, to which Vega just waved his hand. Joker was tapping out a rhythm on the tabletop, absorbed in some inner vision. Liara had changed, got cleaned up. But she was tense as hell.

"I'm sorry I didn't come get you as soon as the comm came through," he said to Liara. "We may have found Shepard."

Liara sat down so abruptly in one of the mess hall chairs that in someone younger, less graceful, it would have been called falling. Kaidan realized that he suddenly had the rapt attention of everyone in the room. Should he go ahead and tell them, or wait? Which would be faster in the long run? How was he supposed to make these kinds of decisions when the world was all sharp edges and super bright lights?

He was saved from making a decision, and possibly guessing wrong, by the arrival of Tali and Garrus trailing Engineer Adams, Dr. Chakwas, Javik, Traynor, and Donnelly, Daniels and Adams from the Engineering bay. He nodded to them all, in lieu of more drawn out greetings.

"We may have found Shepard," he repeated. A few of the people who had been going for coffee stopped in their tracks. He couldn't imagine any other topic that would rivet their attention so fast. It was easy to forget he wasn't the only one who had a personal stake here.

He realized for the first time that while he'd been in the comm room they'd all been working on getting the Normandy working. Shepard would probably want him to focus on the crew, on getting them safe. Hell, if their situations were reversed and he was the one lost out in space he'd want her to just focus on getting everyone else home. Good thing she didn't get a vote.

"Liara and I got the comm system running and convinced Admiral Hackett to send a rescue group to the Citadel. They found a sealed pocket of debris near the Citadel center, and there are life signs inside. The issue is going to be getting into the debris field without depressurizing it. And every minute counts," Kaidan said.

"They could use the drive core to extend their ship's mass effect field around the debris," Engineer Adams began. But Kaidan threw up a hand to stop him following that line of thought.

"This ship doesn't have a drive core. It's from the first contact war. All original Earth tech. That's why they were able to get it up there so quickly. They didn't have to stop and repair a bunch of damage from that blast that took down the Reapers," Kaidan said.

"So it did work, then," Garrus said, quietly. "The Reapers are gone?"

Oh hell. This was why the fraternization rules existed. He was so focused on Jamie - no, _Shepard_ \- that he was totally falling down on his duties as a commanding officer. Though, to be fair, he didn't exactly command Garrus.

"Admiral Hackett confirmed that all the Reapers, and Reaper creatures, on and around Earth were killed by that blast. We know that it traveled through the mass relays to other systems and we can hope that it killed Reapers in all of those systems too," Kaidan said. Garrus accepted this with a small nod.

"A biotic could use a mass effect field to keep the debris pressurized," Liara said, slowly. "But I think. . . yes. I think that they would still have to work fast. It should be possible to prevent any unwanted debris shift or any depressurization. But a complete airtight seal would be beyond the abilities of most biotics."

"There are two biotics on board," Kaidan began, but Dr. Chakwas interrupted him.

"Have they been able to determine anything about her state?" Dr. Chakwas said. "Is she severely injured?"

"Yeah, what about like shock and blood loss and stuff?" said Joker, a frown etched deeply into his face.

"Oh, shock isn't a problem," said Dr. Chakwas. "Not if her cybernetic implants are at all functioning. Even after taking a lot of damage her neural implants would prevent her from going into shock or blacking out."

"Wait, what?" said Kaidan, suddenly more awake than he'd been in hours. "You mean she might be severely injured, but still conscious?" _Alone in the dark and in pain?_

"Well, yes." Dr. Chakwas shifted uncomfortably. "I did several scans of her implants over the last two years. There are several redundant systems built in. Cerberus designed those implants to keep Shepard going through a suicide mission against the Collectors. As long as her major organs aren't injured she could be alive for a long time. The implants would keep her breathing, keep her heart beating. And the neural implants seem to focus on keeping her adrenaline production up for a battle. She shouldn't be susceptible to shock. And she wouldn't pass out unless she lost so much blood that . . . well, she wouldn't pass out unless she wasn't going to wake up again."

Kaidan swallowed panic. Panic would not help.

"It's good for us to plan on her being awake, anyway," Liara said. "This is Shepard. Even if she's very badly hurt, she might kill a few of the rescue workers before she realizes they aren't another Cerberus faction out to rebuild her."

"That is the most frightening compliment I have ever heard," Traynor said, crossing her arms over her chest.

"The team they were able to get isn't very experienced." Kaidan cut across this with his best Major voice. "At least, the biotics aren't. We will know more about the experience of the engineers and rescue operatives when we talk to them. For now, we need to find a way to address the three problems we have set in front of us. We need to talk the new biotics through maintaining pressure in a field of debris. We need to know how to move debris without destructuralizing the entire pocket. And we need to find a way to make sure Shepard doesn't kill the rescue team." He paused to gather them all in by eye. "Does anyone have any other issues or concerns that they want to see addressed?"

"How would they get her back on that ship at all?" asked Donnelly, raising his hand. "A ship like this one, you can just open the cargo bay and extent the mass effect field. But they have to be able to wrestle her into an airlock."

"Good question. Anyone have an answer?" Kaidan asked. There was a moment of silence. "Every minute counts. We need solutions fast."

"Maybe. . ." Engineer Adams began, then stopped. He looked around. "I wouldn't have thought of that, I guess, but it did used to be a pretty common problem back before mass effect fields became commonplace. I remember having classes on that back in school. I think the common practice was to have spacer equipment for the person being rescued, and at least four outriders in full space suits to clear a path. I hope they have hand tractors to move the rubble. A lot of crews rely on having a biotic on board now, but there are machines that can keep rubble off the rescue party."

"Yeah, these biotics might be busy. We'll ask about the hand tractors," Kaidan said. He looked around. His headache was reacting nicely to the stimulant. On the one hand, he was very awake now. On the other hand, he could practically hear his blood throbbing through his head. "That's good work. Does anyone else have any concerns?"

Silence, for three throbbing head-aching heartbeats. Then Liara shook her head and shrugged.

"I don't have concerns, but I do have a thought. I have previously used my biotics to assist in a depressurization emergency. It's been a few decades but I can coach the new biotics through it." Liara nodded reassuringly.

"I have a thought, too," Tali said. "About the debris field. On salvage missions it is very important to save tech that might be floating among heavy wreckage. You want something slow and finely tuned for that. There is a trick one can do with a standard calibration pump that makes it perfect for that."

"Excellent. Tali, you'll tell the rescue team how to do that, and how they operate it," Kaidan said. "I think, if the rescue team takes their comm links and turns the output out super high, your voices should be audible to Shepard. That should reassure her and keep her from doing anything to injure the rescue workers or herself."

"You should be on the comm, too, Kaidan," said Dr. Chakwas. "Your voice is very distinctive. And you are the one person Shepard will know is absolutely not working for Cerberus."

 _Because even looking the woman I love in the face, knowing she'd been given back to me from the dead, I still called her a traitor and walked away._

"Yeah, okay," Kaidan said. He vastly preferred to gloss over how and why that was a good idea. A man could only deal with so many things at once. "Good work everyone. Let's get moving."


	3. We're Coming For You

Thank you for reading! I don't own Mass Effect, its characters, plot lines, story, or anything.

* * *

The roaring dark surrounded her. It screamed and groaned. Every endless agonizing second burned. This had to be Hell. If she was still alive, the pain should have made her pass out. It was just what she deserved. For the people she'd left behind to rot in the slums when she joined the service at eighteen, for the lives she'd taken. For the people she'd lost in the name of some mission or other.

But just because she didn't deserve any better didn't mean she hadn't hoped.

A thin prick of blue shone through the darkness on her right. Then it widened. Mass effect blue. Like the lights that had crackled over her bed, while she watched the stars race by. Who would put so much clear plascrete in a spaceship? Huge expense. But worth it.

The light got bigger, brighter. The darkness around her screamed. What the hell was this? What was going on?

A shape came into the light, framed by that biotic blue. Her breath caught, her heart beat faster, more erratically. _Kaidan_. Then another shape came through. They were framed in the blue light, the blue light big and open like a door from Hell into Heaven. People were pouring through. People with big equipment, people with empty hands glowing blue. She tried to call out to them, but her voice still didn't work. It came out a croak. But they had a machine. They pointed it right at her. Then they came over, step by slow and careful step.

"Shepard? You're being rescued," Kaidan's voice was faint at first, but got louder with each step. "These guys are Alliance. You can trust them. Don't warp them, okay? I don't know how long it would take to get another team up here."

"Thanks, Major," one of the suited figures muttered. Three of them surrounded her. They were blocking the light. She tried not to panic. _Please don't leave me in the dark again._

"Sorry," Kaidan's voice said. But where was he? "Status report, people."

"We've got a problem," one of the figures said. "That rebar isn't near her, it's through her. And I'm afraid that moving her might break off this. . . skin."

"Shepard, you're going to be _fine_ ," Kaidan said.

"All right, you don't want to jostle her too much." That was Tali's voice! "And you definitely don't want to remove anything from her until you're in a medical bay. You're going to be slow and gentle like this is your own mother, you understand?"

"Sure, but how are we supposed to get her back on the ship?" one of the figures asked. Shepard had a few ideas. She opened her mouth to tell these people what to do next, but all that came out was a croaking whimper.

"Mother Goddess, she's conscious," said one of the figures. "I thought that was just a precaution."

"So it is even more important that you jostle her as little as possible," Kaidan said. He sounded strained. Why was he so strained? What was wrong? If she could move, she could go fix it. Damn it. Were they in danger? Were these Alliance kids in danger?

"Here is what you are going to do," Tali's voice said. "Use that calibration pump to hold her steady while you take your laser drill and cut through the debris. You're going to want to aim the calibration pump at a spot about three inches under her. And you're going to want to cut off about six inches of the debris that is surrounding her. It's small enough that if it isn't stuck, it will float away when you lift her. And you can get it in the airlock."

The three figures were joined by two more, and they all bent in a flurry of activity. They were moving her. _They were moving her!_

"You did great, Commander," Kaidan's voice was saying. "You managed to kill every Reaper on Earth. And maybe everywhere else, too. I'm sorry we couldn't be the ones to rescue you. We just can't get there in time. But these guys are very good. We found out that the two biotics they have with them were trained by Jack! If you hadn't saved them back on Grissom Academy you'd be in a world of trouble right now."

"That was way easier than I thought it would be," one of the figures said.

"You are welcome," said Tali's voice. "Now, use the calibration pump to lift her out, gently. Some of the rubble is going to come with her. That's good. It will stabilize her on the way to the med bay."

The figures lifted her up, and one of them reached for her face. He had something in his hand, but then he stopped.

"Guys, I want to put this emergency breather mask on her, but it looks like her face is pretty badly burned. I'm afraid that putting the mask on will do a lot of damage. And. . . these models rest on the jaw. I'm not sure the jaw is. . . ah. . . is stable enough for that." The figure said. Silence greeted him. The other figures moved her along, with giant hand tractors. There were two of them on each side of her. Like pallbearers.

"How far are you from the airlock?" Liara's voice asked, after a moment.

"A little less than two meters. We managed to hook onto a spot that was close to her."

"Prangley, you need to move up next to the Commander and put a shield around her and the people with the hand tractors. Like we discussed," Liara said. One of the figures to her right raised his omni tool like he was going to say something, but then he just pulsed out blue energy from his hands. They were surrounded by blue light. She found that to be extremely comforting. "And Rodriguez? Be ready to integrate your shield with Prangley's shield. Both of you be ready to move your shields to get into the airlock."

"What if we have to drop the shields instead?" said the figure to her right. "What if we can't maintain them and change their shape at the same time?"

"You will do it," Liara said. Shepard knew her well enough to detect the beginnings of implacable rage in her voice. That was not reassuring. "You will do it perfectly, and never drop shields once. If you fail I will tell Jack that you let Shepard down when she needed you most. And after Jack is done tearing you into tiny, tiny pieces, I will make sure she feeds whatever is left to her pet varren."

"I understand you're upset," said the figure on her right. Prangley? "But Jack loves us. She wouldn't. . ."

"Shepard saved Jack's life more times and in more ways than I can count. And yours, if I recall correctly. Which I do." Liara was really mad, now. Prangley must have been a genuine pain in the ass. "Jack would rather die than let Shepard down. So stop arguing with me, and focus on your damn shields."

"Yes, ma'am," said Prangley. The blue light around them shuddered, and then was smaller. Brighter. Then, it was down almost to her skin, skimming over her. She could just barely feel the faint crackle of the mass effect field. _Kaidan used to. . ._

"We've reached the airlock. All crew inside," said one of the figures. There was a loud whooshing clang, then the blue light vanished. Her strange escort kept her moving. "We're taking her to medical bay.

"Our doctor says she doesn't want to wait for your doctor to physically examine the Commander and then tell her what's happening," Kaidan's voice said. "You should have some tech on your omni tool that will let you scan her and then send us the data on this channel."

One of the figures waved an omni tool over her, then fell back and another took his place. The walls around her were utilitarian white, but dingy. Old. She was carried through a doorway. An anxious middle aged woman waited there, not wearing any spacer equipment at all.

"Oh dear," the new stranger said. "We can't just put her on one of my tables. Here, set up those hand tractors over here, we'll keep her suspended until I get that rubble off her."

"Doctor Orrington?" Kaidan's voice said. "Dr. Chakwas has a lot of experience with the Commander's implants. She says that a strong enough pain medication will knock her out. Something about the implants being triggered by endorphins. Plus, it sounds like she can use it."

"Right away, Major," said the new stranger. Dr. Orrington. Odd name. The strangers suspended her in the hand tractors near a bunch of obsolete medical equipment. Then Dr. Orrington advanced on her with a syringe.

"Shepard, you took some heavy damage with those heroics you pulled off," Kaidan's voice said. "But you're not done yet. We still need you. I need you. So you fight like hell to keep breathing, soldier. That's a damn order."

The needle disappeared into her arm. Almost instantly, the pain eased. And she could feel herself slipping into a dark pit. _Not again not again not the dark. . ._

"You're not alone. We're coming for you." Kaidan's voice followed her into the darkness. And then there was nothing.

* * *

"She's out, Major," said Dr. Orrington. Kaidan slumped, held his head in his hands. "I am fairly confident that this is Commander Shepard. I believe this is N7 armor."

 _How damaged does it have to be before you have to guess?_

"It's Shepard," Dr. Chakwas said. "These cybernetic implants are unique."

Relief and hope seared him. He had to lean heavily on the comm system controls so that he didn't just fall down. What was it his dad used to say? _Rage and grief will keep you fighting, relief will cut you off at the knees._ He'd always thought that was the most cynical old-soldier saying possible but now it made sense.

"They also saved her life," Dr. Chakwas continued. "This much damage would have killed anyone who didn't have a machine to help them keep breathing. She would have slipped into shock for certain, and died hours ago."

"Thank the Goddess she's alive," came Liara's choked voice from behind him.

"How bad is it, Doc?" asked Joker, from somewhere much further back. The entire crew of the Normandy had gathered in the old war room to hear what happened on the rescue mission. Saved him a debriefing, so he hadn't argued. Besides, not one of them would have voluntarily left.

"Well, this is just from a standard navy scan so it might not be the most accurate. But from what I can see, it looks like she has second degree burns all over the left side of her body. Kidneys crushed. Rebar through the left side and the right thigh. Right shoulder bones crushed, but tendons and nerves not severed. Bullet wound in right side, damaging stomach and small intestines. Several fractures to ribs." Dr. Chakwas paused in this horrible litany. Kaidan couldn't bring himself to open his eyes or turn around. _She was awake through that. Through all of that. In the dark. Alone_. If he'd been quicker, he could have made it to the beam with her. "Multiple contusions. Her cybernetic implants are malfunctioning but not entirely shut down. They restarted her heart, and they are what was keeping her conscious instead of slipping into shock. The implants have many redundant systems and were designed to take a lot of damage. They were made with the thought that she would be facing the Reapers, and that she would be taking heavy damage in the fight. The implants make her very, very difficult to kill."

"Thank the Goddess," Liara said again. Kaidan took a deep, shuddering breath. _What would Shepard do now?_

"Everyone, you did a hell of a good job here. We have a fighting chance to get Shepard back." He said it without turning around. But he knew they would hear him. "The next order of business is going to be to get this ship running. I want a status report on the Normandy in an hour. Until then, get something to eat. Grab a shower. Take a minute. We're not out of the woods yet."

"More like primordial jungle," Joker said. Kaidan smiled. If Joker was cracking jokes about little stuff things must be looking up. He listened to the sound of footsteps retreating.

"Kaidan?" Liara asked. "Why did you call her Shepard? I thought your job was to comfort her."

"That's a soldier thing." If his head didn't hurt so much, if his nerves weren't so raw, he probably wouldn't have answered. "She's the Commander when we're in front of other Alliance types. Calling her Shepard is being familiar. Since she outranks me. Or she did. And I just. . . when we're on her ship she still outranks me. She's in a class by herself." He paused. "She's only Jamie when we're, you know. Alone. In private."

"But she calls you Kaidan," Liara said. "All the time."

"She's ranking officer," Kaidan said. He waved a hand vaguely. "It's a human custom. Sorry, I guess it doesn't make a lot of sense."

"Is that why you were ordering her around instead of reassuring her?" Liara asked. Yeah, that probably looked pretty harsh to someone who wasn't Navy.

"Yeah," Kaidan said. "Shepard would claw her way out of Hell to save her crew. But I don't think she'd do the same to save herself."

"That is a very salient point, Major," Liara said. She rested a hand gently on his shoulder. "I will leave you in peace."

He listened to her quiet retreat. Alone at last, he sat heavily on the floor and held his aching head in his hands.

 _She's alive._

He'd held her a long time after she went to sleep, that last night. Trying not to think that maybe this would be the last time he'd get the chance. He loved the way the light shone through her short-cropped hair, almost a halo. He'd gone to sleep pretending maybe that night was just one in a long series of nights, stretching out for years. Not the last.

And now, maybe, it _wasn't_ the last.

His dad had that saying about relief cutting a man off at the knees, which was his rationale for withholding information about the safety of fellow soldiers and family members until the fighting was done. But Dad never told him about the fear that came hard and fast on the heels of hope.

It made sense, actually. Now that there was something at stake again, something to lose, there was something to fear. He'd just wanted a few minutes of being happy she was alive before the fear cut in again.

 _Kidneys crushed, second degree burns, rebar right through her. And a bullet wound in her abdomen. That could be a killing shot right there_. Had they saved her just to lose her again?

He had to get his head together. To get straightened out. There were a lot of people on the Normandy that needed his help. He absolutely couldn't get fixated on this one problem. Well, more fixated. If that was even possible.

Hell, he didn't even know where they were. They'd gone through two or three mass relays, at least, he'd heard the drive core cycling through. But it could have been more. It could have been a lot more. After those first few everything got really noisy.

He took a deep breath, then another. He needed food. And sleep. Or else he'd be useless. How had he ended up ranking officer on a ship, any ship? _Shouldn't have taken that job training biotics. Now people think I know what I'm doing._

He stood up, flexed his shoulders, stretched.

"Ah, Kaidan?" Joker said. "Did you want that status report in here, or. . .?"

"Damnit, Joker," Kaidan snapped in surprise. "Sorry, you just, you know, startled me."

"Yeah, okay." Joker had his arms crossed, leaning way back. "She's built like a tank. Like a really nimble tank. While we were off chasing Collectors Shepard upgraded the crap out of her. Even the retrofitting Alliance brass couldn't ruin it. We don't have any hull breaches. Some of our gear is a little strained, but not a lot of it is broken. Except, the drive core is burnt out. It would take about a thousand kilos of element zero to repair it. That's what Tali said, anyway."

"Did they elect you to deliver the status update?" Kaidan asked.

"Hell, no. I'm just bored. Can't do a lot of heavy lifting," Joker said. "They all still want to talk to you."

"So where are we?" Kaidan asked.

"No clue," Joker shrugged. "That kind of thing was never a hardware measurement on this ship. Edi. . . Edi always took care of it."

"I'm sorry," Kaidan said. Joker waved his hand.

"She's probably somewhere in some cluster of data we haven't gotten to yet. Maybe the crash knocked her out of her physical platform. I was freaked out at first, but now I'm not. After all," Joker grinned. "We got Shepard back from the dead. Again. That's more resurrections than Jesus."

"Heh, that's true," Kaidan grinned. "We'd better figure out how to get back to her, though. I don't want to be Captain of this thing, and you're not qualified."

"Like I'd want it," Joker said. "Spend all day writing reports? No thank you."

Feeling better, somehow, Kaidan went to see what the rest of the crew had to say about the ship. He had a lot of work to do.

* * *

"Shepard?"

She knew that voice. British, heavy on the attitude.

"Shepard, if you can hear me, open your eyes. But lie still. Don't try to move."

Were they not open? She tried once, twice, to open them. Felt like the worst hangover of her life. Felt almost as bad as waking up on that Cerberus table.

 _That's where I know the voice from._

Shepard pried her eyes open to see Miranda leaning over her.

Was it all a dream? The Collectors, the Reapers? Grunt and Jack and Jacob? Kaidan?

"Relax, Shepard," said another voice. Another very familiar voice, like tires crunching gravel.

"You're in an Alliance hospital in Vancouver." Wrex appeared above her, too. "Miranda is helping you."

"I think she knows that, thank you," Miranda said.

Opening her mouth to tell Miranda that no, she didn't really know that, seemed like a lot of work. She'd definitely trust the woman at her back with a gun, but laid flat in a hospital she wasn't so sure. Call it conditioning.

"You're not going to be able to move, Shepard. Not for a few days. We have to keep you still so that you don't jostle anything we just fixed. Or your tubes." Miranda's voice was entirely too matter-of-fact and cheerful. What tubes? "You're not quite out of the woods. But we want to get you to drink a little water, see if that goes where it is supposed to. And give you a chance to talk to us, of course."

Miranda held out a pack of water with a little plastic probe sticking out of it. Shepard swallowed water, cool and delightful. Miranda took it back after just a few sips.

"What tubes?" Shepard croaked. _I can talk!_ Light and noise and all good things were returning to her.

"You crushed your kidneys," Miranda said.

"And you only have one set," Wrex added, in some inexplicable disapproval.

"You're hooked up to a dialysis machine. It's kind of like mechanical kidneys. We're growing you some new ones but they won't be ready to implant for at least eight weeks. I'm afraid you're stuck in this hospital until then."

"What happened?" Shepard asked.

"Well, the most pressing thing was your combination kidney failure and that bullet wound to your abdomen. They started you off with massive doses of medigel, we got you into surgery, and now it's just a matter of medication and hope. You're on enough antibiotics to cure a regiment, Commander. With some luck that will keep you from going septic. Tomorrow we'll go in for the shards of bone in your shoulder, and give you a kind of temporary bone. It's a calcium matrix, actually. We have to wait for the swelling to go down to actually give you new shoulder bones, of course."

"I saw their pictures of your bones, Shepard," Wrex put in. "I have no idea how you punch so hard with those little twiggy things in your arms."

"There's also the burn damage, and the holes from the rebar," Miranda said. "And the cracked ribs. I'm currently arguing with some of the doctors here about the best way to deal with the burns. They numbed your nerves well, which is good, but they can't seem to grasp that what you have there isn't exactly skin."

"No," Shepard managed at last. "What happened to the Reapers? And the mass relays? What happened to the geth?"

Miranda and Wrex shared a look. That was freaky. They'd never done that before. Hadn't spoken much at all, actually.

"The Reapers are all dead," Wrex said. "Everyone we can get in contact with says the same thing. They all just dropped dead when they were hit by that blast. Why do you ask about the geth?"

"The Crucible could kill all synthetic life, or none," Shepard said. "I chose . . . I chose to kill them."

"I'll go ask if anyone has heard what happened to the geth," Miranda said, her face worried.

"Bakara says that Tuchanka made it through mostly whole," Wrex said, as soon as Miranda was gone. "Earth and Palaven got the worst of it. We managed to stop the Reapers before they wrecked our galaxy."

"Wrex," she croaked, "I heard people from the Normandy when I was dying. I'm not sure this isn't all some dream. What happened?"

"We don't know where the Normandy is," Wrex said. "But you weren't dreaming. You heard them. Alenko got the Alliance to send a ship out to look for you. I think he talked the biotics through the rescue. Or Liara did. Or Jack. The accounts are a little confused. The point is, the crew of the Normandy is alive. We just don't know where."

"They're in trouble." She remembered that from what Kaidan had said. Shepard tried to look around her room. But she couldn't even really move her head. "And I'm stuck here. For months!"

"Yeah," Wrex said, scratching his skull plate. "I don't know about them being in trouble."

"Get me a comm unit," she ordered. Just like they were back on the hunt for Saren, and he might do what she asked. "Get me some way to contact the Normandy."

"I'll do what I can," Wrex said, "but things are kind of a mess here. It's not as bad as London, but all the major population centers got hit."

"I'm Commander Goddamn Shepard," she said, as fiercely as she could. Which wasn't very. Damnit. "And you're the toughest, smartest krogan that ever landed on Earth. Get. Me. A. Comm."

"That's better," Wrex laughed. He moved like he was going to slap the bed in his humor but thought better of it. "Now I know it's really you."

"What, there were a lot of mostly dead women in the Citadel?" Shepard asked. Wrex shook his head, waved his hand, and lumbered off. Hopefully to find her a comm unit.

She'd done it, though. She'd stopped the Reapers.

Who would have thought she'd live through that?

She'd find out what happened to the Normandy. And then. . . then what?

She'd spent years ramping up to that one fight, that one goal. And now it was done, leaving her quite literally in the rubble. This emotion, this shock that wasn't exactly happiness, surely had to be vertigo at apogee.

What the hell was supposed to happen now?

She didn't want to fight anymore, not really. Not for these stakes. Or maybe she just needed a vacation.

Did laying in a hospital bed for two months count as a vacation?

She lay there taking deep breaths and meditating on being well. That got boring a long time before Wrex or Miranda came back. Were vacations supposed to be boring? Shore leave wasn't boring.

Maybe the problem was that she was alone.

Eventually, Wrex came back with a woman wearing a green uniform and two men in black, carrying a massive comm unit. It had to be one of the new quantum entanglement arrays. Her heart lifted. No matter where they were, as long as the comm system was up she would be able to reach the Normandy.

The woman wearing green did several things to the equipment surrounding her. Mostly she cleared a spot and set up two hand tractors. Then the men in black levered the comm unit into the hand tractors so it would be facing her as she lay flat on her back.

Well, that lacked a certain dignity.

"Is there any way you guys could sit me up and put this thing back on the ground?" she asked. The men in black, who had just finished adjusting the hand tractors, gave her some looks for that one. But the woman in green clucked her tongue and shook her head.

"You're not moving one inch until we take you in for surgery tomorrow. Behave yourself, Commander," she said. Then she called up her omni tool. "Who would you like to contact?"

"The SSV Normandy. Designation code sigma-one-six-eight-four-nine-alpha. Access code Priority, Shepard." It wasn't common practice to have a priority code be simply a person's name, but Edi thought it was funny. She said it fit because the Commander was like a shepherd, guiding everyone home.

She had to know if it was true. If she'd killed Edi, and the geth. She'd vowed to do better after Torfan. To get everyone home, every time she could. To never again prioritize a mission over the people serving under her. But then the Reapers had come, and she'd chosen to kill her friends in order to get the mission done.

Should she have chosen control? Or synthesis? Control was probably a pipe dream. Anything the Illusive Man got so crazed about had to be a bad idea. But synthesis could have saved everyone. Well, she would have died, but that hardly mattered. It would have been easier to die that way than to die in the rubble of the Citadel. It just. . . it just didn't seem right. To take that choice away from everyone in the galaxy, to dump memories and thoughts in their heads from Reapers who had lived for millennia. It would have changed the universe in ways she couldn't even predict or comprehend.

It was too big, and she'd fallen back on her orders. Again. Just like Torfan.

She had to know. She wasn't sure she could live with this.

A face appeared over the vid screen. It was Tali, in her biotainer suit, with Engineer Adams behind her. Shepard smiled. Which didn't quite work, it was like her face was paralyzed. Maybe that "numbing" effect that Miranda had talked about? But she was happy deep in her soul to see them alive.

"Shepard?" Tali asked. She glanced down at the controls as if she were seeking confirmation.

"It's me. I'm a little freaked out that you have to ask," she said. "Is everyone on the Normandy all right?"

"Yes," Tali said. Shepard's heart climbed in hope. "Well, we can't find Edi. Her physical platform is disconnected from her consciousness. And I've been poking around in the software of the Normandy but I haven't seen any trace of her."

"I'm afraid she's dead," Shepard said. The words were heavy on her tongue. "I had to make a choice, when the time came to use the Crucible. I couldn't kill the Reapers without killing every other synthetic life form. Miranda is checking to see about the geth."

"Keelah," Tali said, shaking her head. Engineer Adam's hand went to his mouth, and he bowed his head. "I will miss her, but. . . you did have to stop the Reapers, Shepard."

"Yeah." Now did not seem like the time to bring up the other two options. Was it ever going to be the right time to do that? "Where is everyone else?"

"After we got you to the hospital, and we talked about the state of the Normandy, everyone took a rest break. We needed it. But I couldn't sleep very well. The ship is silent as the grave. So I came down to Engineering, and found Adams still working."

"I just wanted to fix one more thing," said the Engineer. He did look strained. But then, just a day or two ago they'd all been at war. "Mostly, the ship is intact. We just don't have a working drive core. And the things that Edi handled are, well. Broken."

"All right," Shepard said. "Where are you guys?"

"That's sort of the problem, Shepard," Tali said. "We have no idea. Tomorrow, after we've completed the emergency repairs, we're going to fly over this planet looking for settlements. If we don't find any we're going to have to leave orbit and try to orient ourselves with some old star charts Donnelly kept as a hobby. It would be a miracle if those relics are even accurate, and another miracle if we happen to be in a part of space they cover. I have no idea how to get the galaxy map to function without Edi. Fortunately, this is a garden world. Someone has probably settled here."

"Good," Shepard said. She paused. "I remember Kaidan telling me that you guys needed me. But it sounds like everything is okay."

"We don't just need you when our asses are on the line, Shepard," Tali said. Behind her, Adams snorted and shook his head. "Speaking of Kaidan, he'll fry me if I let him sleep through your call. Liara and Garrus, too. Engineer Adams, will you please go get them?"

"I don't want to interrupt their sleep," Shepard said. But Adams left anyway. Being laid flat was really hurting her ability to command people.

"Not that I'm complaining, but shouldn't _you_ be asleep?" Tali said. "I don't want to offend you, Shepard, but I've seen dead people who look healthier than you."

"Yeah, not offensive at all," Shepard said. "What happened on the Normandy after I had you come pick up Liara and Kaidan?"

"Evasive maneuvers, mostly," Tali said. "Lots of them. The ship's artificial gravity couldn't even keep up. I can tell you it's a good thing we upgraded this ship while we were on the Cerberus payroll. Then the blast came through and every ship was ordered to evacuate the area. We made it to the mass relay, but not quite in time. The blast _propelled_ us through the relays. I've never seen anything like it. We didn't have any control at all."

"How is Joker taking all of this?" Shepard asked.

"He doesn't know that Edi is dead. Actually dead. He thinks she's in the ship software somehow. I'm . . . I'm afraid to tell him. He isn't taking the rest of this very well, and to tell him that on top of it might overload the system."

"It's not your job to tell him, Tali," Shepard said. "I'll do it."

"I'm not waking that man up for this," Tali said. She looked behind her. "I only wake people up for good news. Shepard is on the comm."

"She's conscious?" That was Liara's voice! "Surely it is too soon."

"I'm surprised she hasn't shown up at our doorstep with an Atlas and a headache," Garrus said. "Getting killed the first time hardly slowed her down at all."

"She was dead or unconscious for years after that, actually," Liara said. Then they appeared. The comm room must be more crowded than it had ever been, and Garrus and Tali were almost squeezed out of the range of the vid pick-up, but there they were. All alive. Three more members of her little family accounted for.

"On second thought, Shepard, Liara is right," said Garrus after he stared at her for a long moment. "You should definitely be resting."

"I am resting," she protested. "I'm laying very, very still. And I wasn't killed again. I've only been dead the once."

"Are you sure?" said Garrus. Kaidan elbowed him.

"How are you feeling, Commander?" Kaidan asked. All duty and on duty. That didn't give her the warmest, fuzziest feeling.

"Fine," Shepard said, out of habit. Then she added, "I feel like I got hit by a truck on my way back from shore leave, but I gather that the pain isn't as bad as it ought to be. Apparently I've been numbed. Whatever that means."

"Probably a light nerve stun," said Liara. "Or a very heavy nerve stun, actually."

"Whatever it is, it's miraculous," said Garrus. "I can't believe you're talking to us right now. You shouldn't have woken up for days."

"I'll sleep when I'm dead," Shepard tossed off. No one laughed. She must really, really look like hell.

"What happened on the Citadel?" Kaidan asked.

"The Illusive Man beat Anderson and I to the Crucible," Shepard said. "We managed to kill him, but Anderson died in the fight." She wasn't ready to explain how he'd died, exactly. How she'd been forced to kill him by the Illusive man, how he'd been forced to shoot her. Maybe she'd never be ready to explain that part.

"I heard Admiral Hackett on the comm," she continued, "and then I was transported to a large chamber with three control interfaces. A VI program appeared and told me . . . well, it talked about why the Reapers were created. And how maybe now they weren't necessary. It gave me a choice. And I chose to kill the synthetic life forms, all of them, in order to stop the Reapers."

"What was the other choice?" Garrus asked. Of course he would ask. He used to be C-Sec, a detective.

"There were two other choices," she said. Was she really going to tell them? She didn't have to. She could lie, right here and right now, and no one would ever know. "But they didn't involve killing the Reapers. Only one choice could accomplish that. But I knew that when I did it, it would kill all the other synthetics as well. Their blood is on my hands."

If all the blood on her hands were real, and not metaphorical, she would be drowning in it.

She still hadn't told them. Not really.

"How did you survive?" Liara asked. She would have shrugged if she could have.

"I have no idea." She'd known that choosing to kill the Reapers would leave her alive, at least momentarily. But she hadn't expected to survive the blast. Or to be rescued. They had all known that making it to the Citadel was a one-way trip.

"I'm just glad you did," said Liara. Tali nodded.

"Well, now that we've made sure you're okay, I plan to get this ship operational asap," said Garrus, leaning back and crossing his arms. Doing so took most of him out of the range of the vid pick-up. "It's time I get back to Palaven and help rebuild."

"I am eager to return to Rannoch, as well," Tali said. She waved at Shepard. "Take care, Shepard. Listen to your doctors."

"I should go, as well," Liara said, glancing at Kaidan. "I am truly happy to see you alive, Shepard. Jamie. I. . . I am sure that you will recover in record time."

"Thank you," Shepard said. "All of you." And one by one, they left. Until only Kaidan was standing there staring at her.

"All right, Major," she said. "Hit me with it. How bad do I look?"

"Don't get me wrong, Shepard. You breathing and talking is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen," Kaidan said, gesturing emphatically. "But that really, really looks like it hurts. Are you sure you're not in pain?"

"Nothing I can't handle," she said. He'd come closer to the screen when the others left, and she could make out the strain on his face. "How about you?"

"Me?" He laughed. "I'm the luckiest man in the Universe. When you put me on the Normandy for evac I thought I'd never see you again. You've got to stop saving me, Shepard."

"One time I did that. And you'd have done the same to me, if I'd been the one thrown around by an exploding Mako." She wanted to reach out and touch his image. Even if she could do it, that would just be frustrating. He wasn't really here.

But he was somewhere, alive and kicking. That had to be good enough.

"No, that makes three," Kaidan protested. "You threw me out of the way of that Beacon on Eden Prime. You ordered me off the first Normandy, and you stayed behind to get Joker. You putting me on evac and then charging off to certain death? That's number three."

"I'm not apologizing," she said. He laughed again.

"Fair enough," he said. "If it was the other way around I wouldn't apologize either. I just never want to lose you again."

"Well, I don't want to lose you either," she said. "So now that we're alone, what's the real status of the Normandy?"

"It really is all right," Kaidan said. "There's some issues, but nothing that will get us killed this week. Which is a real improvement over how things were a few days ago. The thing is, everyone wants to get back to their worlds and start rebuilding. And I get that, because I want to be back on Earth more than I want to keep breathing. But we might not be able to get the drive core working."

"What does that mean?" she asked. He held up his hands.

"That depends on where we are. I just don't know." He leaned in, as close as he could get to the pick-up without being fuzzed out. "But I promise you, Jamie, I will do everything I can to to get back to you."

That was the kind of thing that would make anyone's heart flutter, and she was no exception. But they weren't civilians, and this wasn't just about them.

"You have to get everyone home, Kaidan," she said. "You have to keep them all safe. I don't matter."

"What are you talking about?" he asked, rocking back. "Of course you matter."

"I'm just an old soldier with too much blood on her hands," she said. "I keep trying to get ahead, to save more lives than I take. But I keep fucking it up. If being with you again means that even one person loses their life, doesn't get rescued, whatever, then it's not worth it."

"It's not just being with you again,Shepard," Kaidan said. "Getting the Normandy back to Earth means getting a lot of key personnel and equipment back to the Alliance."

"I just don't want you to promise me something that could cost someone else later," she said. He looked at her for a long, long moment.

"Jamie. . ."

"Don't call me that!" she snapped.

"Fine. Commander, that's horse shit," he snapped back. "You just saved billions of lives by killing the Reapers. Which you did damn near single handedly. If there were some kind of mortal arithmetic here - which there _isn't_ \- you would be way ahead. So snap out of it. Every treaty that was forged during the Reaper war is fragile as a wooden crate, and you are the only person that every race will listen to. So the next time you start thinking you're not important, you just remember all the krogan, and the rachni, and the quarians, and everyone else who is depending on you to keep banging sense into people's heads."

Silence fell, and they stared at each other. At last, she swallowed.

"I've never seen you mad before," she said.

"Yes, you have," he replied. "You've just never seen me lose control of it. Not that this was far out of control, just. . . except Horizon."

"Ah." Yeah, that made sense. He was pretty locked down. "That was kind of out of line, Major."

"Pretty sure I outrank you now," he pointed out. "Which means you're the one who would be out of line. Not that you are. When it's just the two of us I don't think you could ever be out of line."

"I think I'm just. . . weird. With the pain meds or whatever they have me on." She was usually much more controlled than this. Kaidan touched his hand to his head, delicately, an old gesture that let her know how much he must be hurting.

"I hear you," he said. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have lost my temper."

"I don't know what comes next," she admitted. The words just bubbled out of her. _In any sense. Life, love, work, the fate of the galaxy, any of it._ She had to get better, fast, or she'd end up blabbering all her innermost thoughts. No one needed to hear that crap.

"We get the drive core fixed," he said, straightening to look at her. "And then I get everyone home."

"Garrus must be really eager to get back to Palaven," Shepard said. Glad to be talking about someone other than herself. "And Tali just got back to Rannoch. She'll want to go build that house."

"Yeah," Kaidan sighed. "And Vega wants to get to Earth pretty badly, too. Some of it's wanting to help rebuild, but some of it's more, ah, personal. And he figures he got splashed in some of the glory on Earth, so he's. . . valuable."

"Valuable." Something twinged in her cheek, and she realized she was smiling. Maybe the numbing stuff was wearing off. That was not a great sign. "That's not what he said."

"I am _not_ repeating what he actually said." Kaidan made a warding gesture. She could have laughed out loud. Except that would probably snap her ribs or something.

"What the hell is this?" said Miranda's voice from somewhere near her feet. "Shepard, how did you convince them to levitate a goddamn half-ton comm unit over your bed?"

"The comm unit is levitating?" Kaidan asked. "You're not in some kind of stasis field?

"She is in a stasis field but it is, quite sensibly, flat." Miranda was moving around her bed. She could hear her, but she couldn't move her head to watch. "It's maintaining her nerve stun so she can talk without screaming in agony. What are you doing?"

"Getting a sit rep from my, ah, Major?" Shepard said. Kaidan put his hand over his eyes and shook his head.

"Is the Normandy in the local cluster?" Miranda asked. She moved closer. Shepard could see the top of her head, now.

"No, Earth is the only garden world in the local cluster," Kaidan said. "We know we're not there. But we could be on any one of dozens of worlds."

"Have you got supplies?" Miranda asked. Kaidan couldn't see her, but he could hear her just fine.

"We do, but we hope to get the drive core working and head to Earth soon," he said. He was looking at the corners of the screen, as if he might be able to see the person talking if he just picked the right edge. It was kind of cute.

"I'm afraid that's not possible, Major," said Miranda. Her voice was so low, so serious, that Shepard reflexively jerked her head to look at her. Except her head wouldn't move. So all she got was a twinging pain in her neck. "The reports are coming in from every sector with a quantum entanglement comm system. The mass relays are broken. Physically broken. The Crucible blast knocked pieces loose. Unless you're in a system very, very close to Earth you're not coming here. Not in this life."


	4. And We Will Find You

Thanks for reading! I don't own Mass Effect or any of its characters.

Kaidan stared out the starboard observation lounge at the dense jungle. He'd been all over the galaxy during the past ten years, but this planet didn't look familiar. He'd been all over Noveria, Eden Prime, Terra Nova, all the garden worlds that were in a star cluster close to Earth. He'd bled on most of them. And he was no xenobiologist, but these trees didn't look at all familiar.

The mass relays were lost. Surely someone would want to rebuild them. But maybe they wouldn't want to rebuild the relays closest to him any time soon. Maybe they wouldn't want to rebuild the mass relay to Sol. Maybe it would take decades.

Even if he got the ship working again he might never see home again. Or his mother. Or Shepard.

"The helmsman asked me to come get you," said Javik's voice behind him. "He seems to be in some dispute with the quarian."

"Thank you, Javik," Kaidan said. He turned to follow the Prothean back to where the trouble was. Javik didn't seem at all concerned that they were stranded. But then, his definition of "emergency" was probably vastly different than anyone else's.

Javik led him to the cockpit, where Joker was punching up a flight protocol. Tali was standing next to him, her arms crossed, hips cocked. He didn't need to be able to see her face to know she was pissed.

"The Normandy isn't equipped to travel without artificial gravity. And you know that without a drive core the artificial gravity can't function. There's no way a suborbital arc will be safe. The crew and all of the equipment will be tossed around like rag dolls," Tali said. "You need to stay close to the ground."

"I need you to strap me to this chair so that we can take off," Joker said, continuing with the flight protocol like Tali didn't matter. No wonder she was pissed. "Hard to fly when you're floating out of a chair."

"A sudden fluctuation in gravity could damage you most of all, Joker," said Tali, exasperated.

"Thanks, Mom, but I'm good. Just get me some straps," Joker replied. Then Tali saw them. Kaidan grimly started into the cockpit. He had never, _ever_ wanted command.

"So we're good to start up?" Kaidan asked. Always good to get a bad conversation on a different track. "That's good work."

"Thank you," said Tali, in a voice more sarcastic than gracious. "I have been advising Joker that we should stay near the ground to remain in the gravity field of this planet."

"And I've been telling her that doing a planetary sweep at cruiser height could take weeks. Months! A higher altitude will let us actually make a full sweep before we run out of fuel. And food. And water," Joker said. "We could get comprehensive surface data about the planet. Then even if it isn't colonized we will have a decent shot of figuring out where we are."

"That's true," said Kaidan, "but just starting the ship up without telling anyone or giving us a chance to make preparations is extremely irresponsible." It was like he was channeling his father. Crap. "And if this planet is highly colonized we'll have taken that chance for nothing. Let's do a low sweep today, and then if we don't find anyone we'll go higher tomorrow."

"Indecisive much, Major?" Joker sneered, but he didn't argue further. Tali shook her head, threw up her hands, and stalked out of the cockpit. Kaidan settled down into the co-pilot seat. Joker jerked as if he'd been shot, and he gave Kaidan the most uncomfortably sad look, but then he clenched his jaw and said nothing. _Edi's chair._

"I want to know the second anything appears on the horizon," Kaiden explained. Joker didn't even acknowledge he'd heard. The guy wasn't this bad even back when Kaidan had first met him.

With a heart-lifting pure note the secondary engines started up. They skimmed over the tops of the nearby trees, then lifted into the unsupported air. The world fell away behind them, wave after wave of beige stone and green leaves. Kaidan settled back into the seat and watched both the data read-outs and the sky.

It wasn't long before they found it.

Stone and wood buildings stretched out in front of them. There were streets. They were too high up to see the people, but Kaidan was sure they were there. Some buildings were small, some were large. But it looked like a city. Not a colony. There were no modules, no standard colonial kits. Someone had carved up rock and stone and used it to make houses. It stretched out for kilometers.

"See? Heavily populated," Kaidan said.

"I'm glad you're so cheerful, Major," said Joker. "Because there's nothing like that on Eden Prime or Noveria. Wherever we are, we're decades away from Earth."

"There's cities on Terra Nova," said Kaidan. Joker's crap had to be let roll right off. He couldn't take it seriously. It was part of the man's grieving process. Shepard had insisted on telling him about Edi herself. Saying that she'd essentially killed her for the cause. If Joker needed to be a nuclear blight to deal with that, then Kaidan could take whatever he dished out. "Take us down, Joker."

"Yeah, sure," Joker said. Kaidan punched the button for the in-ship communicator. It should carry to all of the rooms on board the Normandy.

"Good news, everyone. This planet appears to be heavily colonized. There is a city down below. We are making our approach now. With any luck they will be able to tell us where we are, and give us the supplies to fix our ship." He shouldn't take the whole crew with him. He'd never be able to convince the locals that they weren't invading. Who would be least likely to upset the locals, but also handy in a fight? "Could Liara and Vega please gear up and meet me in the shuttle bay?"

"Nice choice," said Joker when he cut the transmission. "They won't be threatened at all. They'll probably think we've come to start up a strip club."

Kaidan shook his head and got up to leave. "You're getting better, Joker. Keep it up and you'll be funny again in no time."

Okay. So maybe he wasn't the perfect picture of calm he had wanted to be.

He'd run into a lot of crazy things on colonies. Husks. Mind-control plants. Mind controlled colonists. More husks. Collectors. What were the chances that this city would be full of citizens just trying to live their lives?

" _Santisma Muerte."Jolos' voice carried through the dark. Faint wisps of yellow light fell through the wooden floor slats above. She could taste the dust in the air. Her heart was pounding, pounding so hard they had to hear it. The other children were silent, flat as she was. But it felt like her heart was trying to climb up through her throat and escape. But they had to hide. Had to hide, had to stick together. Their only chance was to stick together. Whimpers in the room above. She hardly dared to breathe._

" _Accept our sacrifice, and see that our business is successful tomorrow," Jolos said. That was when the first hot, wet drops hit her wrist. She didn't move. Didn't make a sound. If they heard her, if they heard any one of the children with her, they were all dead._

" _Shepard?," a voice in the dark. Strident, so loud. Discovered!_

"Shepard?" Someone was saying her name. She struggled to wake up, her heart pounding from the dream. Just a bad dream. Why her subconscious had dug something up from nearly thirty years ago, instead of any of the horrors she'd seen since, would just have to be a mystery. She opened her eyes.

Still in that hospital bed. Still underneath that comm system. Still totally unable to move. But hey, she wasn't stuck in that nightmare anymore. Small silver linings.

"Shepard?" That was Jack's voice.

"Stop it, you're going to wake her up." And there was Miranda. The dream team, together again. Hopefully, Jack just wanted to drop off some flowers or something. Hopefully she didn't have her pet varren.

"Too late," Shepard said. Her voice was a pale croak. "Hi, Jack."

"Hey, Shepard." Jack's voice moved closer. Not being able to move her head was becoming an immense pain. "Nice set-up. I ought to have you send some vids of yourself to my kids. Scare them out of doing anything stupid ever again."

"Your bedside manner sucks ass," Shepard said. She didn't have the patience to wade through Jack's mannerisms today. Maybe she could convince her to come back in a week. Or a month.

"I'm not here for a social call," Jack said. "I'm here because there's something you need to know."

"Whatever it is, someone else will have to take care of it," Miranda said. "Shepard is scheduled to go in for surgery in two hours."

"Back off, precious," Jack snarled. Ah, just like old times. Hurray. "Shepard, the new council is holding an open forum over vid comm. I've been listening in. Half the damn galaxy is, the half that can get to a unit to broadcast. And the salarians are opposing fixing the mass relays. The asari want to do it, but slowly. Like, one every decade slowly."

"Why the hell would they do that?" Shepard snapped.

"The krogan," Miranda said, like it was just occurring to her too. "They want to insulate themselves from the krogan and the rachni."

"Yeah, they're saying that it's just until trust is confirmed. Or earned. Or whatever." Jack leaned over the bed, and Shepard could see her at last. "We've got to get you in that meeting so you can tell them why that's incredibly stupid."

"Yeah, get me patched in," Shepard said. Miranda appeared on her other side, leaning over her.

"You can't just charge in this time, Shepard. Let them talk and if they make the wrong choice we can deal with that later." Miranda looked like she wanted to shake her. "You're in no condition to go save the day."

"It's just a vid comm, I won't get up," Shepard began, but Miranda shook her head and disappeared from view. When she came back she had a simple hand-mirror. It was the first time Shepard had seen herself since before the Crucible.

Below the collarbone and around the back of her head she was covered in an arcing blue grid. Presumably that was the field keeping her on a heavy nerve stun, keeping her numb. She was just a disembodied face. But it wasn't exactly her face. She was a mass of red and black on the left side of her face. Her left eye was burned down to the cybernetic implants. That must be why the red on her cheek glowed so brightly, it was showing the implants just like it had when she had first woken up in that Cerberus lab. But more so. She had a black eye on the right side, and her lip was split. The whole left half of her hair had been singed. She looked, basically, like someone who had taken a rough ride through hell.

"Miranda, that's not a bug. That's a feature." She refused to explain any more. Her face would tell the story of the cost of defeating the Reapers, and her part in that, more than any words she could say. They wouldn't be able to brush her aside. "Get me into that call. Do it now."

Miranda didn't move, but Jack did, and Shepard could hear her clanging around. Miranda sighed and straightened up, out of sight. The comm started to flicker into life.

This was certainly a conference. She found herself looking at an array of faces, all completely shocked. She'd never seen a batarian look shocked before.

"I apologize for my appearance," she began. She had their attention, best not to squander it. "Activating the Crucible and destroying the Reapers was not an easy task. I understand that you are all discussing how best to fix the mass relays?"

"No," said Primarch Victus, one of three turian heads on the screen. She didn't recognize very many faces. But then, a lot of high-ranking officials must have died when the Citadel was taken. "We're discussing how to keep the issue of the mass relays from blowing up into the next galactic war."

"This is your fault, Shepard," said one of the salarians on screen. "You're the one who undid the genophage and unleashed the rachni on us. We would be able to repair the relays and resume trade normally if we didn't have to insulate our homes from them."

"No, you wouldn't," said Bakara. She, at least, looked wonderful. Shepard wished she could just talk to her, see how motherhood was treating the krogan peace maker. Maybe later there would be time. "You would be dead. Shepard was right about the Reapers from the beginning. She developed the treaties that led to the Crucible being built. And she fired it. She saved us all."

"Of course a krogan would think that way," the salarian said, making a dismissive motion with his hand. Shepard was really hoping this wasn't the new salarian ambassador. What _was_ it with the salarians? Every salarian soldier or scientist she'd ever met was a wonderful person. But the politicians were always horrible.

"As I said before," said one of the asari, "I am certain that there will come a time to co-operate and rebuild. I would just like to discuss more treaties, and make sure we are all on firm ground."

"If you make the repairs of the mass relays part of those treaties, you will make them useless as soon as the relays are built." Shepard wished her voice were stronger. "You have all seen what behaving with distrust bought us. We were scattered, too afraid that we would become vulnerable to reach out and help each other. Earth paid the price for that. And so did Palaven, and Thessia. Our worlds would not be so damaged now if we had co-operated sooner. We came together to fight the Reapers. We all took heavy losses in that fight. If we fall apart and revert to distrust, to fear of betrayal, then we will have gained nothing. We will have merely survived. This time. But if we use this to strengthen the ties that bind us we can come out of this tragedy stronger."

"It is not that simple," said a volus on the screens. "Rebuilding will be expensive. Very costly. There are many raw materials that will be needed."

"It will be easier to get those materials from places where they are abundant to places where they are needed if we get the mass relays working," Shepard replied.

"That's why firm treaties are so important." The asari who'd spoken before seemed to earnestly believe in what she was saying. Shepard tried to think of what treaties the asari would have seen broken recently. Nothing came to mind. But for the asari, "recent" might be hundreds of years ago. "If we do not negotiate where resources are going now we may well be in wars over them before the end of the century."

"I agree, treaties are needed," said Shepard. "But we can't make them out of fear. Those treaties have to build on the ties that were forged during the Reaper attack, not prepare for what will happen if ancient rivalries are rekindled. The rachni were instrumental in building the Crucible. They can help rebuild the relays."

"We can help, also," said Bakara. She inclined her head, which set her tasseled veil swinging. "If we are not to be confined to the demilitarized zone."

"Charging a mass relay and setting it on fire won't be helpful," one of the salarians - not the same who had previously spoken - said. Shepard couldn't imagine what help the krogan would be, but if Bakara said they could then they could.

"Without the mass relays, our homeworlds will not be rebuilt within my lifetime," Shepard said. No one was interrupting her, or objecting to the way she jumped in all the time. Maybe it was the very visible battle scarring. Or maybe her fame had become useful while she wasn't looking. "We need to connect Thessia, Palaven, and Earth to the rest of the galaxy's resources. Or else the sacrifices these planets made on the front lines of the war against the Reapers will haunt us for generations to come. The salarians might be more willing to commit resources to repairing the mass relays if their homeworld had been under attack."

"You go too far," said the exceptionally unpleasant salarian, but Primarch Victus cut him off with a violently dismissive gesture.

"No, Shepard is right. We need resources and we need them now. Every one of us has mined our local systems extensively. We will need access to unpopulated asteroid fields and far-distant rock worlds if we want the minerals and metals to rebuild our world. And the asari and humans have the same problem. I propose that we start with the major nexus routes and build from there."

"I can see the wisdom in that, but I would still like to discuss our treaties," said the asari, stubbornly. She must be the new councillor. She'd do just fine.

"If you are going to do this, you will have to do it without our help," said the salarian. "It is a mistake to leave the krogan and the rachni unfettered."

"Yes, and what about the batarians?" asked a batarian on the screens. "Did our homeworld not suffer? Were we not on the front lines?"


	5. No Matter What It Takes

I don't own Mass Effect or any of its characters or settings. Thanks for reading!

Kaidan stepped out of the back of the Normandy, flanked by Liara and Vega. Wearing armor again after so many days of fatigues on the ship felt like finally being dressed. Green fuzz crunched underfoot, not quite grass and not quite moss. Probably native biology. The complex of buildings and green spaces Joker had identified as a transport hub was sparsely populated. But there was a welcoming committee headed for them. All human. There were five of them. They were led by a middle aged woman, and she was flanked by two men and then two soldiers in full armor. Alliance soldiers.

The day was looking up. Maybe he could pull rank.

"I'm Major Kaidan Alenko of the SSV Normandy," he said. For Alliance soldiers, being a Major would mean more than being a Specter. "Our ship crashed here after the retreat from the Crucible."

"Major Alenko." The head woman looked at one of her subordinates. "You served with Commander Shepard."

"Yes," he said. "Could you tell us what planet we are currently on? Our nav systems and drive core were damaged in the crash."

"You're on Watson, Major," the head woman said. It felt like the bottom of his stomach dropped out. Watson was in the Skepsis system, in Sigurd's Cradle. On the other side of the galaxy from Earth.

 _I might never see home again._

"My name is Jocasta Buchannon," the head woman continued. "And we can talk more later. But right now, there's something happening that you need to see. Please follow me."

"What's the problem?" he asked. But he was already moving. And so were Liara and Vega, in step right behind him. He hadn't exactly chosen the team for their combat efficiency. They were both fine fighters, but the three of them weren't the most effective team he could have scrambled.

"It's Commander Shepard," Jocasta said. _How is she in trouble now? She should be in a hospital, getting prepped for surgery._ "She's talking to the galactic delegates about rebuilding the mass relays."

"Can we see the broadcast?" Kaidan asked, following Jocasta into one of the larger buildings. She didn't answer. She didn't have to. They'd walked into a large room, practically the whole building. A large vid screen covered the top half of one wall. It was broken up into different squares, each filled with a different face. Some of them he knew, high ranking government officials and officers. Some of them he didn't know. But they were all listening, because Shepard was talking. He smiled despite everything. She was a great soldier, but this was her real gift. He'd seen her charm or intimidate people into doing any number of things they absolutely would never have considered otherwise.

But she still looked like hell. How was she focusing enough to make an argument?

"She must be on a very, very heavy nerve stun," said Liara. "She doesn't seem to feel the pain at all."

"Or Lola's a tank," said Vega. "Too tough to care."

"We need to connect Thessia, Palaven, and Earth to the rest of the galaxy's resources. Or else the sacrifices these planets made on the front lines of the war against the Reapers will haunt us for generations to come. The salarians might be more willing to commit resources to repairing the mass relays if their homeworld had been under attack," Shepard said. That was a heavy blow.

"You go too far," said one of the salarians, but Primarch Victus cut him off with a sharp gesture. He'd always liked Victus.

"No, Shepard is right," said Victus. "We need resources and we need them now. Every one of us has mined our local systems extensively. We will need access to unpopulated asteroid fields and far-distant rock worlds if we want the minerals and metals to rebuild our world. And the asari and humans have the same problem. I propose that we start with the major nexus routes and build from there."

"I can see the wisdom in that, but I would still like to discuss our treaties," said one of the asari.

"If you are going to do this, you will have to do it without our help," said the salarian. "It is a mistake to leave the krogan and the rachni unfettered."

"Yes, and what about the batarians?" asked a batarian on the screens. "Did our homeworld not suffer? Were we not on the front lines?"

"I'm sorry," said Shepard. Her voice was hoarse. It was impossible to read her facial expression because one whole side of her face was crossed with livid red burns. Her left eye shone red. Her face was surrounded by the blue arcing field that was keeping her from feeling the pain of her injuries. He clenched his jaw, several totally different and conflicting desires running through him. He wanted her to be safe in the hospital, concentrating only on herself. He wanted her to be free to be the shockingly effective soldier he'd first lost his heart to. He wanted her to sweep this idiocy aside and convince the combined races of the galaxy to work together, just like she always had in the past. He wanted her to be free to go do whatever it was she wanted to do now and let the world save itself for a while.

Every face in the room was watching her speak, rapt. The other galactic dignitaries fell silent when she spoke. She probably didn't even realize the impact of her injuries, the gravity lent to her by everything she'd done.

Actually, she probably did.

He realized in that moment that no matter how safe they all were, no matter what happened, she would always be in the middle of the worst dangers. She'd never sit back and focus on herself, or on peaceful things. She couldn't even let this meeting go by uninterrupted until she was able to at least come out of a medical stun field. _If I wanted to be happy, I should have fallen in love with a happy woman. But no, I had to fall for a soldier._ He was just going to have to figure out some way to keep it from interfering with what he had to do.

He could start right away. The people of Watson watching the broadcast with such grave attention were well-dressed, well-fed. There was no trouble here. The Leviathan presence in Sigurd's Cradle had perhaps kept the Reapers from focusing much firepower here, at least this early in the invasion. This colony was likely to have the resources they needed to repair the drive core and get enough extra fuel and food to go wherever they had to go.

The problem was, where could they possibly go? This planet was as good as any other. They could get to one of the Alliance bases on Franklin, the moon orbiting Watson. But he wasn't sure that would be better than here.

"I spoke carelessly," Shepard was saying. She didn't have to make excuses, her injuries made them for her. "The batarians have suffered greatly. Many species who did not hold a seat on the council suffered greatly, and everyone deserves the same access to galactic resources. We can come out of this tragedy ahead if we work together."

"Your sentimentality is what brought us to the brink of another galactic war right on the heels of the first," said the unpleasant salarian. "Your words of cooperation are just wishful thinking. If we allow ourselves to be swayed by these arguments, we will have no protection against the expansion of the krogan and the rachni."

"I am not a sentimental person," Shepard said. The salarian opened his mouth to retort, but she just kept talking in that hoarse voice. Barely louder than a whisper. "I never married. Never had any family. Before I was the Savior of the Citadel I was the Butcher of Torfan. I have sent so many of my friends to their deaths that when I am dragged to the abyss I will have an entire regiment waiting to escort me. But I am the soldier who told you the Reapers were coming. I am the soldier who saved the Citadel, who stopped the Collectors, who killed the Reapers. I am the soldier who does the impossible things that no one else dares to try. And I did none of it alone. I had friends and teammates from every corner of the galaxy helping me on each of those missions. If any one of them had cared more about ancient fear and hate than in securing the future, those teams would have fallen apart. We would all be dead now. Either melted by the Collectors or burned by the Reapers." She paused, as if to swallow. "Please reconsider."

How did she _do_ that? Aim a high-caliber speech and hit so close to the heart?

"We will consider your point," said the salarian. No one could have stood up to that.

"I believe that we are in agreement, otherwise," said the asari who'd been so interested in treaties. "We will rebuild the relays as quickly as possible, but we will remain in contact so that we can discuss how resources will be allocated."

"Yes, Madam Councillor," said the Primarch. "We agree."

There was a slow and quiet chorus of agreement from around the screen.

"Even now, Shepard is helping us," said Liara. She shook her head. "I don't know why I'm surprised. Every time I run into a huge wall she's already there, dismantling it."

"We need to get the ship fixed before we can use the mass relays," Vega pointed out. "Actually, we might need to help fix the mass relays."

"Jocasta," Kaidan said, cutting across this chatter. "Our ship needs about a thousand units of eezo to function again. We might need some other supplies, it will depend on where we're going next."

"We don't have that much eezo," said Jocasta, smiling like he'd just asked for the moon. He was probably too used to high-stake missions, where huge requisitions were perfectly normal. "But I'm sure if you hit up two or three different settlements you could trade for that much. Even for the crew of the Normandy I don't think we could give it away free."

"We've got credits," Kaidan assured her. _Maybe not enough, but we do have credits._ "I'd like to see a local map and get oriented. But first, now that we know where we are I'd like to check in with command."

"Of course. I'll be in this building." Jocasta gestured vaguely around her. "Come talk whenever you're ready."

"Thank you," said Kaidan. _We can get our ship moving and then. . . what?_ His steps were slow leaving the broadcast center.

"Using only an FTL drive it would take twenty-two years to reach Earth from here," said Liara. "Assuming that we didn't run out of fuel and drift until we froze to death."

"Doesn't matter," Vega said. "The mass relay systems are going to be fixed."

"Not soon," said Kaidan. "At least, not this one. We're one jump away from being in a cul-de-sac, and there are no crucial resources in the Titan system past us. Sigurd's Cradle is going to be pretty far down the list of places to hook back up to the mass effect relay. It could take years."

"What the hell are we supposed to do in the meantime?" asked Vega.

"I believe that is the problem," said Liara. They hit the doors of the Normandy and barely paused.

"Damn right. Liara, Vega, would you please tell everyone where we are and what the status on those supplies is? I want to see if I can catch Shepard before she moves out of range of the comm." Kaidan strode straight to the comm room without even looking to see if he was obeyed. _Even if we can't go home, there's got to be something we can do to get the systems online. I'm not the only one who's burning to get back to my homeworld._

He punched up the comm unit Shepard had been calling him from. An image solidified in the holo screen, but it wasn't Shepard. It was that dark-haired woman he'd met back on Sanctuary. The one who used to work for Cerberus.

That white jumpsuit had to be playing hell with her circulation.

"Hello, Major," she said. Totally unsurprised. Miranda Lawson, that was her name. She'd worked under Shepard, and for Cerberus. He took a deep breath. Whatever she had been, she was helping Shepard now. And maybe, just like those scientists they'd saved on Gellix, she was ultimately a good person.

"Hello, Ms. Lawson. I take it I missed Commander Shepard?" he asked, inclining his head politely. She was reading some kind of file.

"The first step in prepping her for surgery was taking this comm unit away from her," said Miranda. "I wasted no time doing so as soon as she was done talking to the galactic delegates. I'm sure she will insist on having it back fairly soon, but we have a lot of work to do on her. She may not be able to talk for some time."

"Ah." He was a grown man. That was just another piece of news. There was no call to freak out. Really. "We found out where we landed. It's Watson, in the Skepsis system in the Sigurd's Cradle cluster."

"That's not terribly far from the Omega cluster," said Miranda, glancing at her file. He frowned.

"It's a whole star cluster away. Even using faster-than-light travel the trip could take nearly a year." But maybe there was something on Omega. Something that would help get them all home. Those pirates would have their relay up as fast as they could find the materials and engineers. They'd never risk throttling their trade.

"Five and a half months, actually," Miranda said. "Do you think you can get there?"

"Ms. Lawson, what's this all about?" he asked. She sighed, and flipped through the file she had.

"You must understand. I was the director of Project Lazarus. I headed the team that brought Shepard back from the dead. But I wasn't the lead scientist. There are things I don't know, or things I don't remember clearly enough," Miranda said. Cold rage ran through him. He tried not to let it show. "So I can't fix her implants. I need more data."

"Dr. Chakwas has data on Shepard's implants," he said. He hoped that his anger didn't come out in his voice. If it did, she didn't care.

"No, Dr. Chakwas has readings. I need the raw data, the blueprints and the software." Miranda stopped flipping through her file and met his eyes. "Shepard's implants are malfunctioning. They're putting a lot of stress on her heart and lungs and her nervous system. They're sending signals that aren't right, keeping her heartbeat irregular. I can't just take them out, and I can't fix them. I need more data."

"But her implants were what saved her life," Kaidan blurted out.

"Yes, they haven't stopped working completely. It was helpful before, but now it's putting a strain on her that she can't cope with. I don't know how much longer her system can take it," Miranda said. He felt like someone had shoved him into a snowbank wearing only civvies.

"This could kill her."

"Yes," said Miranda. "Not immediately, but within the next few years. A more immediate concern is what the stress is doing to her immune system. She lost both kidneys, and she took a bullet wound to the abdomen. She's in danger of a fatal infection."

"Put her in stasis until this is figured out," he said. Miranda quirked the side of her mouth at him. _How dare you be amused?_

"You know as well as I do that stasis fields are far from perfect," said Miranda. "If they were, every military medical bay would use them. It's dangerous to put a person into stasis if they aren't perfectly healthy. The results can be unpredictable."

He knew that, actually. He was just not thinking straight. He tried to take a deep breath but it felt like there was a vice around his chest. _So at what point this decade do I get to stop panicking?_

"Do you think that there's some kind of data on those implants in the Omega cluster?" Kaidan asked.

"Cerberus used to move a lot of goods through Omega itself," said Miranda. Of course they did. Criminal bastards. "There should be a field agent's data cache on the station. With the right passcodes, that cache will give information on any Cerberus mission."

"Aria is in charge of Omega again," said Kaidan. "And she owes Shepard a favor. She could get that data to you, no problem. She's very effective."

"I thought of that, too. No one is answering the comm on Omega. Not any of my personal contacts, not Aria, no one. The whole station has gone dark," said Miranda. "I don't have access to any reports of what may have happened there. It could have been Reapers, or a gang war. Or maybe the place is fine but on lock-down. There's just no way of knowing without sending someone to land there."

"That's an awful big coincidence," said Kaidan. "You need someone to go into a dangerous, possibly deserted gang-run space station. And we happen to be the next star cluster over."

"There are field agent data caches all over the galaxy," said Miranda. "You happened to show up near one of them, and that one happened to be dangerous. There's one in the Decoris system, too, right by you. But it was decommissioned after Shepard killed all the staff and took all the research projects six months ago. I doubt that the agents in charge of clean-up left the data cache lying around for any pirate to pick up. Omega was still an operating station right until they went dark. Most of the others are not manned, or they are not manned with people who could be trusted to send the data uncorrupted. It would be a great deal more convenient if you'd happened to surface in The Phoenix Massing, or the Horsehead Nebula."

"Yeah, all right," said Kaidan. "Why should I trust that this isn't a trap? You used to be Cerberus." _And your father created horrors._

"If it was anyone else whose heart and lungs were stuttering, I would leave them to rot," said Miranda. "But Shepard saved my sister. And me, back on Sanctuary. It's not about allegiances or the big picture. It's about personal loyalty. Something Shepard understands."

"Are you saying I don't?" Kaidan asked. Miranda snorted.

"I was there on Horizon, Major. You're loyal to the Alliance, to an ideal. You walked away from helping us to stop the Collectors because you were too wrapped up in an idea of who was good and who was bad. I was there because I was given a chance to be part of a team, and to do something important. Really, really important. I care more about results, and Shepard cares more about people. It's personal, Major," Miranda said. Her eyes were narrowed, her back straight, practically vibrating with anger. But then, so was he. "You might not trust me to watch your back, but when it comes to Shepard I'm more trustworthy than you. She needs that data on her implants. And I wouldn't waste my time or my breath sending you into a trap."

With great effort, he stifled the first three responses that came to mind. All of them began with curse words. He took a deep breath, and let it out. Then another.

Leaving aside all the personal crap, she did sound sincere. He'd done stupider things on worse intel.

"We will probably be able to get the ship fixed within a few days," Kaidan said at last. Miranda blinked at him. Apparently she was expecting him to fire back. Well, tough. "I don't think that laying in basic supplies for a six-month trip will be a problem, but I do think we'll need to do something pretty exotic about fuel. The flotilla used to refine their fuel on their ships, I'll see if something like that will work."

"Good," said Miranda. "Let me know." Then she cut the comm.

He shook his head and walked slowly out of the comm room. His headache was starting back up. But he couldn't help grinning. He had to figure out a way to get this crew to a mercenary station in another star cluster without a mass relay. And possibly fight through a mercenary war, or an outbreak of violent VI, or the last stand of the Reapers.

Finally, a problem he knew how to deal with. Maybe even something to shoot. The day was looking up.

He didn't need to call a general meeting, not for this. He went down to Engineering. As he'd hoped, Tali and Garrus were there with Adams, Donnelly, and Daniels. They only looked a little upset to be distracted from their work. He told them what Miranda had said, and outlined his plan. His optimism for this mission died as soon as the reactions started up.

"You've lost your mind," said Tali. No one looked surprised at her vehemence. That was not a good sign.

"There are reasons that FTL travel was a dead end," Garrus put in.

"We have enough fuel for maybe three days of straight boosting, and that's with the extended fuel cells the Normandy has," Tali continued. She gesticulated wildly while she spoke. Kaidan was a little surprised she wasn't pacing. Yet. "Wherever we go, we need the fuel to get the Normandy to speed and then the fuel to reverse thrusters and slow us down. "

"I remember you saying once that your flotilla refined their own fuel," said Kaidan. "I was hoping that something similar would be possible for the Normandy."

"Our refinery process required an entire ship to set up, unless we could already get refined eezo. We mostly used raw materials. With more refined materials, probably. Sure," said Tali. "I can set something up but it will take an awful lot of refined eezo and platinum."

"This isn't just for Shepard," Kaidan cut in. He remembered the crew being a lot more willing to look for ridiculous wild solutions to the impossible. "Sigurd's Cradle is going to be very far down any repair list of broken mass relays. There just isn't that much here that's crucial. Omega is different. It has mining worlds, high-resource planets. And even without official help those pirates will repair their relay if they can."

"We could use gravity to help around the edges of the systems." Engineer Adams spoke slowly, carefully. Like he wasn't sure where he was going with this, he needed to talk it through. "We could boost out of here, then just coast and maintain our velocity until we're within deceleration range of Omega. We don't need to use much fuel in the middle at all."

"The gravitational forces will be too weak to have an effect on a ship using the mass effect. And we would not be able to discharge the static that builds up when we use the FTL. Our systems would fry," said Tali, slowly, not entirely happy about it.

"Maybe we can use that," said Kaidan. "If we're just drifting for most of this run, the static electrical charge should accumulate very slowly, right?"

"Sure," said Adams. Tali just shook her head in exasperation.

"Is there a way to weaponize that?" Kaidan asked. "We might need something dramatic when we hit Omega."

"That's insane!" Tali snapped. "You're. . . no, actually, wait. No. We can't wait that long. I'm not sure of the exact numbers but I know that's too long. And there's no guarantee that the discharge stations on Omega will be operational."

"What about landing on a planet first?" asked Garrus. "Before we get to Omega."

"If we could make it to a planet, sure. That's a great way to discharge the electrical charge," said Tali.

"On the side of the Omega cluster near us there's Eingana, in the Amada system. And there's Lorek in the Fathar system," Kaidan said. He rubbed his temples briefly but it didn't help. "Lorek has been a war zone for decades. Half a dozen warlords want to claim it. Eingana doesn't have any current settlements but there's a lot of starship fuel in the crashed ships on that planet. We make it to either of those places, there's a decent chance we can get the fuel to make either an approach to Omega or to go somewhere else if we have to."

"It's not the electrical charge that builds up between reaching the edge of the Omega cluster and Omega itself that will kill us," said Tali. "It's the electrical charge that will build up while we're in dead space. We can only run for about 50 hours without discharging before we fry."

"Is it maintaining the mass effect envelope that causes the electrical charge to build up, or is it accelerating?" asked Kaidan.

"It's accelerating. We can maintain the mass effect envelope with very little electrical build-up. We would still need to find a way to vent or redirect that energy, but it will build up so slowly that it might be possible to bleed it off at the same rate." Tali said. She stretched her back. Her shoulders slumped. "I must need a rest break more than I thought."

"Told you so," shrugged Garrus.

"Just like discharging at a tiny moon," said Adams, holding his hands up in a little circle. "The weaker the magnetic field, the slower we discharge. The Normandy has those modified heat-storage compartments in the hull, for stealth mode. Those are designed to vent the waste heat in deep space. We didn't want to fry any planet the Normandy landed on. If we got some military grade electro magnets we might be able to modify the waste heat compartments to discharge the static electricity. It would be a very slow discharge but it might be enough to get us to a planet. If we drift to the planet."

Kaidan ran a hand through his hair, considering that. His L2 biotic implant caused static charge, too. It was what made his hair stand straight out from his head. Maybe they could outfit the Normandy with tech-hair, that would disperse the electric charge.

"Any modifications we need to make, we can," he said. "If there isn't material to do it on Watson I'll requisition from Franklin. Just let me know what we need."

"Wouldn't turning the thrusters back on to decelerate to get to the planet build the charge back up too fast to bleed off?" asked Tali. Adams grinned.

"That's where my idea about using gravity comes in. Stars have magnetic fields, too. If we can get positioned to take a close orbital loop of a star in either the Amada or Fathar systems and then hit the deceleration we can discharge all of our electrical buildup into the star's magnetic field. We'll probably have to stay in orbit for a while. Maybe do a spiraling orbit, from the edge of the star's magnetic field." Adams frowned, looked down. Probably running advanced calculations in his head. "I think it could work."

"So we can get to Omega?" Kaidan asked. Tali and Engineer Adams shared a look. How they did that when no one could see Tali's face had always baffled him. But they had been working together for a very long time.

"I'd have to run some numbers to be sure," Adams said, "but I don't think that would be a big problem. Just a long trip. As soon as we get the drive core fixed."

"We should be able to get the necessary materials from various settlements on this planet," said Kaidan.

"The problem will be coming back," said Tali. "Or going on. We will barely have enough to arrive."

"There used to be a fueling station in the Omega system," said Garrus. "But I guess if the station is dark there's no telling what could have happened to it."

Kaidan absorbed that in silence. It was entirely possible this was a fool's errand. That they could travel for five and a half months only to arrive at a pile of rubble. And then they'd be drifting. The Normandy would be dead cold. And soon, so would they.

Unless they managed to get to another star system. Maybe land on Lorek. Throw their hat in the ring with the other idiots trying to rule that rock.

But this was the right call. It was a risk, but they could either take the risk or resign themselves to living out the next several years on Watson. Or the next several decades. The Normandy was too advanced a ship to leave to rot, and this crew had too much experience to waste it sitting around waiting for someone to establish a mass relay to this system. Omega was where the resources were.

And then there was Shepard.

He was damned well not going to sit back and wait to see if she could make it without her implants getting fixed. Their relationship was fledgling, barely acknowledged. A hope as bare and stark as the moon. But he'd loved her for years. That emotion could be a terrible guide to the best course of action. Was this a mistake?

Was he leading his people into death?

Giving his own life for hers was something he'd do in a heartbeat. Hell, he'd tried. She was just faster than he was. Getting this crew killed was a different thing.

"Should we check in with Alliance command?" asked Garrus. "See if they have any orders?"

"That's. . . unexpected," said Kaidan, shocked out of his reverie. "I didn't think you gave a damn about that kind of thing."

"I don't," Garrus said, "You do." He pointed a three-fingered claw at Kaidan. "And you're the Spectre here. If you want the pencil pushers to make this call I can't stop you. Not unless I'm willing to knock you out and take over."

"I would pay to see that," said Tali. Was it just in his head, or did she sound a little more breathless and girlish than usual? What was _that_ about?

 _I would pay to see you try._

Well, Garrus did have about a foot of reach over him. It wasn't impossible.

"I will be checking in with Alliance command," said Kaidan, "They don't know where we are or what we're doing. They need to know. For all I know there's something vital here or on Omega that they need, that we can bring back when we get to Earth. Or send back with the comm system. But we're going to Omega."

"Good," said Garrus. "I'm glad you're being sensible."

"How is that sensible?" asked Tali, throwing her hands up. Garrus grinned.

"He's the guy that's by the book. Pretty sure he's broken one rule in his whole life. And that was just a fraternization reg. No civilized fleet even has them. Doesn't really count," said Garrus.

Kaidan winced. There were at least six different outraged responses to that. The first one that floated to the top was, "How do you know about that?"

"Please. You were as subtle as a flare gun," said Tali, waving a hand at him. Then she rounded on Garrus. "What do you mean, civilized fleets? The quarians have a regulation about fraternization."

"I think you're making my point," said Garrus.

"It's not too late to shoot you," said Tali.

"Excuse me," Kaidan said, loudly. Coldly. Miracle of miracles, they actually stopped to look at him. Engineer Adams looked relieved. "We need to repair the ship and make plans to get to Omega as quickly as possible. I'll need a route schematic and both an optimistic and wildly pessimistic view of our success at getting there. This mission is going to be volunteer only."

"You know no one's going to leave, right?" said Garrus.

"Non-essential Alliance personnel are going to leave whether they want to or not," said Kaidan. "But everyone else, yeah. This is your choice."

"I'll have that data to you in no time, Major," said Adams. He actually saluted.

"Thank you," said Kaidan, saluting back. Then he turned to go tell the rest of the crew.

In a way, Garrus was right. He wasn't big on breaking rules.

But hell, he hadn't been told to stay on Watson. It wasn't like he was stealing the Normandy. Again. This was more like deciding on non-traditional fleet tactics. Besides, if they got good results no one would complain. Shepard taught him that.

 _And if we get bad results we're all going to freeze to death in deep space. But at least no one will be able to complain._


	6. I Will Fight Like Hell

I don't own Mass Effect or any of its characters.

* * *

Everything hurt.

Her back ached. Her sides ached. Her chest ached. She felt like she'd been running on stims for seven days straight, her heart was dancing and skipping. Not in a good way. But if it was just stims, she wouldn't feel like she'd been dragged to crush depth and then shot to the surface.

 _What the hell did I do now?_

She opened her eyes. Everything was bright sharp, white. Like a new colony. Like a hospital. At least she wasn't lying in some field somewhere. At least it wasn't dark.

She tried moving her arms. They felt heavy, and twitched when she tried to use them, but they worked. They kind of worked. She tried sitting up. Her stomach muscles trembled, her back spasmed. Okay, no sitting up. But she could move.

She seemed to be in some kind of Alliance hospital, judging by the insignia on the closed door. But there wasn't any equipment. Naked and under only a sheet. Like they were still working on her. It looked like she had an impressive array of new scars all down her left side. And on her right arm, maybe going all the way to the shoulder. She couldn't be sure without a mirror. At least it looked like she had all her parts.

She raised her left hand to her head. It seemed to work better than her right for some reason, though not by much. Her face was far from smooth. It reminded her of the scars from her implants. Maybe these would heal, too. Or maybe not. Her hair was gone. Buzzed down to practically nothing. Whose idea was that?

She wasn't hooked up to anything. But she still had ports attached to each arm and each leg. So she was stable? But they were still working on her.

"Hey!" she tried. Her voice came out a gasp, and a weakly silent cough that burned her throat and chest. She looked around for a button to summon someone, or something light and small enough to throw. But she saw nothing.

"Shepard?" That was Miranda's voice. Miranda came out from behind her bed. She looked the same as ever. No scorch marks or new scars. So nothing too terrible had happened. At least, not to the world at large. Because if it had Miranda would have been right in the middle of it. "I thought you might wake up today. I moved you to my office. Don't try to talk until we get some water into you."

Miranda disappeared, and came back with a shallow bowl full of water and little round things on sticks that turned out to be sponges. What followed was moderately humiliating, and Shepard couldn't figure out why slowly getting the inside of her mouth wet was better than just giving her some water to sip. At least, until Miranda actually gave her some water to sip and the cool rush of it down her throat caused another coughing fit.

 _I'm going to drown on a spoonful of water._

Eventually, she got rehydrated. If she had the moisture to spare she might have wept in frustration and humiliation. But then this would just take longer.

"What the hell happened?" she asked, when she got her voice back. Miranda's expression never changed once through everything.

"We got you in for surgery on your shoulder, and you had a heart attack on the table," said Miranda. "Or it would have been a heart attack if you didn't have those implants. I don't know what the term is for that exact event, but it was terrifying. That episode damaged your immune system enough to send you into a severe infection. You were septic, Shepard. Without the medical advances Cerberus produced in the last ten years you would have died. Do you remember Dr. Fredericks? He happened to be on Earth when you came in from the Citadel. His work saved your life."

"Good." That name sounded vaguely familiar. Her head felt like it was full of fluff. Or maybe an electric storm. "So I've been out for several days?" asked Shepard. Miranda's mouth twisted into a grimace.

"We had to keep you under in order to flush out your system. The pain would have been severe. It might have caused another cardiac episode. So it was decided that the best thing to do was to keep you unconscious while we fixed a lot of the damage. Your new kidneys have been put in. And they're functioning nicely," Miranda added. Eight weeks, she'd said that would take.

"So I've been out for two months?" Shepard asked. Panic would not help. Her heart already felt like it was tripping over itself.

"Not exactly. We had to take you apart and put you back together, Shepard. And we had to do it carefully or risk causing nerve damage. You've been a pet project of some of the most respected doctors on Earth," said Miranda.

"How much time did I lose?" Shepard croaked out. Miranda pursed her lips.

"About five months," Miranda said. Shepard closed her eyes and just tried to breathe. But her lungs didn't want to do what she told them to. "You were awake periodically during that time, actually. But I doubt you would remember it. I would hope it all seemed like a bad dream to you."

"I think I've lost more than enough time," Shepard said. Where was her crew? Had the asari or the turians sided with the salarians now? Primarch Victus could be counted on to be sensible, actually, but what about the humans? Who was even in charge?

"I'm sure you've noticed that a lot of different things hurt?" Miranda said. "Imagine what that would be like if we hadn't kept you under."

"How?" Shepard asked. Surely being unconscious that long wasn't good for a person.

"The same way we did in Project Lazarus," said Miranda, shrugging. "It seems my life work is resurrecting you."

"I wasn't dead," Shepard protested. Miranda quirked her eyebrows.

"Your heart did stop a few times," she informed Shepard. That was unsettling news.

"Is that why it's jumping like there's turbulence in my lungs?" asked Shepard. Miranda took a deep breath, grimaced again, and sat down on Shepard's bed.

"Actually, no. That's the implants malfunctioning." She said it like it was very, very bad news. Shepard hadn't seen her this serious about anything except Oriana. "They're putting a lot of strain on you. We were able to regulate them better when you were, well, when you were open for surgery. But once we closed you up and kick started your healing process there's been no way to regulate them. We held on as long as we could."

"Held on?" Shepard felt her brow wrinkling and was surprised that it didn't hurt to move her face. She really had been out for a long time. "Held on for what?"

"I think it's possible to repair your implants, but to do so I need certain data from the Cerberus archives on Project Lazarus." Miranda drummed her hands on her thighs. She must have been cooped up in this hospital that whole time. Shepard didn't think she'd ever seen Miranda fidget.

"How are we going to get it?" Shepard asked. "I can't even sit up."

"We aren't," said Miranda. "I asked Major Alenko to retrieve it."

"Oh, good," Shepard said. _Wait_. "And he hasn't done it yet? In five months? What happened? Did the Normandy go dark?"

"No, no, calm down!" Miranda said, making lowering gestures like she could dampen Shepard's heart rate through force of will. "He was on Watson. I believe the information is on Omega. And there's no mass relay, remember, so the Normandy has been using its FTL drives."

"That's insane," Shepard whispered. "That's incredibly dangerous. Why didn't you just call Aria T'Loak on Omega and bargain with her for that data?"

"Omega went dark," said Miranda. "No one was answering the comms. Now they're back online, but Aria isn't in power anymore. Or at least she isn't in control of the comms. A bunch of batarians are claiming that they own Omega now. A very large bunch of batarians. They claim to be an alliance formed from what used to be several disparate groups of slavers."

"And they want Omega because any group holding Omega can control the resources of several of the Terminus systems," said Shepard. "If they have the manpower. Is it just me, or does Aria get usurped every other month?"

"About once a year these days," said Miranda. "Twice this year. I think it's the war. It's a destabilizing influence. If the Reapers hadn't destroyed the batarian homeworld there's no way enough of them would have banded together to swarm under Aria's forces."

"And we can't just ask for the data," said Shepard, "because the batarians hate me."

"I'm glad you aren't impaired by your recent traumas, Shepard," said Miranda. She rose to leave. If Shepard could have grabbed her arm to stop her, she would have. Instead she just flopped.

"No, the batarians _hate_ me." Not that they needed much motivation to turn nasty, but she gave them some solid reasons for dislike. "My crew goes into an Omega that's full of batarian slavers and they'll be slaughtered. Get me a comm. I need to talk to them. I need to get them to turn around."

"They can't turn around," Miranda said. "They don't have the fuel. They can either push through to Omega or they can drift gently through space until they freeze to death. They're going to Omega. And you are in no shape to talk to anyone."

"Damnit, Miranda, this is no time to coddle me!" She slammed her fist down on the bed. More of a jerk than a punch. She was going to need some serious physical therapy before she was able to hold a gun again.

"Actually this is the perfect time to coddle you," said Miranda. "Are you going to be calm, or am I going to keep you sedated until your injuries are healed?"

Shepard just glared at her. Miranda smiled.

"I expect it will take at least another two months. Well?" she asked.

"You enjoy this," said Shepard. To her great surprise, Miranda actually laughed. It was small, and short, and quiet, but it was unmistakably a laugh.

"Oh, yes. Usually when I talk down to you there's no way you could talk back." Miranda got up, bouncing on her heels. At least one of them was feeling spry. "I will get you a comm if you want. But consider the effect. Are you really ready for the Major to associate you being naked with you being half-killed?"

"You're a laugh riot," said Shepard. "Just get me the damn comm."

"You aren't my commanding officer anymore," Miranda pointed out.

"Miranda." No, no, threats only work if you can get up out of bed to carry them out. "Thank you for all your hard work. Please, would you get me a comm unit? And find some way for me to sit up? This is sort of undignified."

"Sure thing, Shepard." Miranda spun her around, slowly. Then she did several loud things to the sides of the bed itself, and it raised her torso without her having to flex a single muscle. Now she was upright, and still propped by the bed. Her sheet flopped down to her lap. Shepard regarded the new scars. The bruising. The swelling that hadn't yet gone down.

"Maybe you're right. Can. . . can I get some clothes?" she asked. She was surely getting good karma points somewhere for not snapping at Miranda to _get her some goddamn clothes_.

"Only because you asked so nicely," Miranda said, in an extremely grating sing-song voice. But she got a white robe from some pile by the door, and she put Shepard's arms through it. It seemed to be on backwards, with the opening at her back. But Miranda probably didn't want to pick her up and wrestle the cloth around her. It was exceptionally disquieting to not be able to put her own arms through the arm holes.

She was facing Miranda's comm console now. There were data pads everywhere. Not strewn, but in neat filing racks. It reminded her of Miranda's old office aboard the Normandy. There was even a window looking out over a snowy Earth landscape. The snow was old, brown and gray in places, but it softened the edges of whatever rubble remained out there. It soothed a part of her heart to see it. This was the Earth that other people loved. The Earth of her childhood hadn't gotten snow. Too far south.

The city where she'd grown up was probably tiny pieces of rubble by now. That was an encouraging thought.

"I'm going for a run," Miranda typed something into the comm system and then stepped away from it. It flickered on. "Shake out the kinks. I've been stuck in here all day waiting for you to wake up so I could check your mental function."

"Thank you." Shepard tore her eyes away from the comm unit to check Miranda's outfit. "Though if you're going for a run in that, in the snow, you're the one with impaired mental function."

"I have better shoes," said Miranda, rolling her eyes. "Smart ass. See you, Shepard." She left with an airy wave of her hand.

If she were capable of getting up right now she could rifle through Miranda's files and figure out what was really going on in this hospital. But she couldn't. And Miranda knew she couldn't or she'd never have left her alone.

Kaidan appeared in the vid screen, lunging at the button. He was wearing old fatigue pants and a plain t-shirt. Had he been asleep? He was panting, like he'd just run to the comm room.

"Shepard!" He hung his head, shook it, and straightened up. "Are you all right?"

"Are _you_ all right?" she shot back, frowning. "Or is the Normandy on fire?"

He laughed, and she felt better. Stupid but true.

"God, it's good to hear your voice. I was asleep. I have my omni tool set to a special alarm if anyone from the hospital tries to contact me," he explained. "You've been out of commission for a long time. Miranda Lawson sent me the records of your medical procedures. I was. . . sorry I'd asked."

"Why?" Shepard said. "Were there pictures?" Horrible, gruesome pictures?

"Videos. Actually." Kaidan shook his head. "You don't want to know what the treatment for your infection looked like."

"That's not the side of me I wanted you to see, Kaidan." The words just fell out of her. No time for consideration or thought. He snorted.

"It wasn't my first pick, either. I think she sent me the worst of it. I offended her, and she doesn't think too highly of me." Kaidan leaned forward, looking her up and down. Why was it that before the new scars were just a fact of life, and now all of a sudden they were embarrassing?

"I'm still me," she said, softly. He nodded, gravely. She liked it better when he was smiling.

"I know. I'm just. . . How are you feeling?" he asked. He stayed leaned in, close. Was it her imagination, or had he put on muscle since the last time she'd seen him? Great, she was picking up scars and he was finding ways to be even more attractive. Perfect.

"Scared," she said. And dammit, that wasn't what she'd meant to say. She wished she could blame it on being in the hospital but it was Kaidan. She just leaked what was on her mind when she was around him. At least, she had since they'd saved the Council from Udina and Cerberus. Before that. . . before that she'd been a lot more locked down.

"What of?" he asked, his voice soft.

"I keep losing time," she said. "And every time I wake up my friends are somewhere I can't get to them, doing something dangerous. What were you thinking? How can you be taking them into Omega now?"

"Hey, this mission was volunteer only," said Kaidan, straightening up. He held his hands out to the side. "Just because no one chose to leave doesn't mean they weren't given the option."

"Nothing that you could recover at Omega is worth your life," she said. Damnit, she was tearing up. What the hell was that? She blinked and hoped he wouldn't notice. The resolution on these things wasn't terribly fine.

"Like hell it isn't," he said, his brows drawing down. "I don't know if Miranda explained this to you, but you've been on Death's door for months now. Your implants are on the fritz, and they're putting stress on your whole system. The data she needs to fix your implants is on Omega so that's where I'm going. If you think that there's any chance I could look at an opportunity to save you and just turn it down you've got another thing coming."

"It's a suicide mission," she said. The corner of his mouth ticked up. Damnit, this wasn't funny.

"This is the Normandy. Suicide missions are our specialty."

"This isn't a joke, Kaidan," she said. "You should land somewhere else. Wait for the mass effect relays to get back up, and get home. You have a responsibility to the crew."

"I am _not_ losing you again," he said. Low and fierce and absolute. The anger in his voice took her by surprise. "When that Reaper landed on you, when the Normandy got blown up, when you went into that beam, I lost you. I've been losing you over and over again for years. Every regret I've got starts with a picture in my head of you sending me off to safety while you stay to die and it is _not happening again_. As long as I'm breathing there is nothing, _nothing_ , that's going to keep me hanging back where it's safe while you take the risks."

"It wasn't your choice, Kaidan, it was mine," she said. "You can't blame yourself for my choices. Taking those risks was my job. My choice."

"Yeah," he said, puffing out his breath in that angry, dismissive way he'd perfected. More eloquent than words. "Well, this is my choice. Don't misunderstand me, Shepard. You don't owe me anything, and I'm not counting on a big romantic reunion. I know you were never planning on having a future. I'll respect any choice you make about us, and if you tell me to get the hell out of your life I will. But if there's ever a chance that I can do anything to keep you alive, to keep you safe, I'm going to take it. Come hell or high water."

"What the hell are you talking about?" she said. _If I'm dreaming, he'll say 'Dr. T'soni, ma'am.'_

"Sorry," he said, rubbing his temples. "Sorry. You don't need to worry about all of that crap right now. I shouldn't have unloaded that on you. I just meant that this is important. You are important. And not just to me. If I were the only one who wanted to go to Omega I would have had a mutiny on my hands. But everyone else that's on board wanted to go too. Some of them, because they want to help you. Others because they know that the Omega relay will get repaired before the Sigurd's Cradle relay, and they want the fastest route home."

"Okay, sure," she said. She felt like she was going to be sick. Surely that was just the dance her heart was doing, and didn't have anything to do with this conversation. "What the hell do you mean, you aren't expecting some big romantic reunion? Did something happen while I was unconscious?" _Again_?

"No, I'm. . ." He rubbed his face with his hands. "It's nothing."

"Damnit, Kaidan," she said. He held up his hands as if in surrender.

"I'm _sorry_ ," he said. "The last thing you need, anybody needs, is me getting all strange now. It's just been a long couple of months. A lot of time to build up the head pressure. Forget I said anything."

"Did you change your mind about us?" she asked, feeling very hollow. This was ridiculous. She should never have let this get this far. She should ask about the relays, the rachni, the krogan. The salarians, for crying out loud. She should ask about the crew, about how he'd offended Miranda. But she was waiting, barely daring to breathe with her broken lungs, for him to tell her if he wanted to keep seeing her. This was ridiculous, stupid. She should tell him 'never mind.' She should lock it down. Instead, she watched and waited in absolute silence.

"No chance," he said, the corner of his mouth twisting up. "There isn't anything I want more than I want to hold you again."

"But you don't think I feel the same?" she said. Kaidan took a deep breath, and paused, staring at her. Like he was desperately trying to think of what to say. Then he shrugged and opened his arms, palm up.

"I know you care about me, Shepard." He tilted his head, acknowledging her. "I also know that you didn't have any plans for the future. Any future."

"I used to," she said. "Then the Reapers happened. Kind of shuffled everything else down a few notches in terms of priority."

"What future did you want?" he asked, his voice soft. She shook her head. It felt like there was a weighted ball inside it, sloshing around with her movements. _How am I supposed to know?_ She'd never expected to live through this. Hadn't thought that far ahead.

"I guess I wanted a second shot at the future that the Reapers took from us," she said. "You and me, on the Normandy. It could still happen."

"Only if you live," he said, smiling ruefully. "You think I don't know when you're trying to soften me for a pitch? You don't want me to go to Omega. But it's not your call, Commander. It's mine."

"Damnit, Kaidan," she said, but she couldn't muster any anger to throw behind the words. Did he not believe her? "I wasn't trying to soften you for a pitch." _I wasn't lying when I was trying to soften you for a pitch._

"Hey, I was the one who was good at covert missions," he pointed out. "Your specialty is more setting things on fire. After you charge them. No wonder you get along so well with the krogan."

"Tell me you at least have some idea for dealing with the batarians," she said, refusing to be distracted. He started pacing, tight little paths that didn't take him out of range of the vid pick-up.

"There are three ideas currently," he said. "I'm afraid I can't take credit for any of them personally. The most popular is to direct our course to Lorek, set up a base of operations, and launch either a pinpoint strike or a hostile takeover. Depending on how many of the mercs and warlords on Lorek we can sway to our side."

"I take it that was Garrus's contribution?" Shepard asked. A ghost of a smile touched her lips.

"Got it in one," Kaidan smiled back. "But my favorite is the one where we head for Eingana, discharge our static electric build up, and salvage some fuel. There's likely to be shooting involved in that but not as much as there would be on Lorek. Can't walk a kilometer in the Terminus systems without stepping over a merc operation. Then, a quiet approach to Omega. In, out, on our way to somewhere more hospitable. I haven't figured out where that is, yet."

"I'm not hearing a lot of exit strategy on that one," she pointed out. "A wise man once told me not to cut corners. He wanted to make sure that I had a way out. A way to get everybody out."

"We're a long way from back up, Shepard," Kaidan said. "I don't think there's a way to get everybody out of this one."

"What's the third option?" she said. Hearing him talk like that was a blow to the heart. If he'd already given up there wasn't going to be any way out. But she knew, from long and heart-breaking experience, that just pointing that out wasn't going to change a damn thing. He needed to hear options.

"We swing by Eingana, then hole up there and wait for a better opportunity," he said. "I haven't vetoed anything out loud but that one's not happening."

"You don't want to risk waiting to get that data," she said. "Your favorite plan leaves a lot of people dead, but gets the data to Miranda. Kaidan, no. Unacceptable."

"I outrank you, Shepard," Kaidan said. He cocked out his hip and crossed his arms, his face grave. _Stubborn ass_. "It's my call."

"What does the crew think of that?" she said. If she pushed, he'd just cut the comm.

"I won't lie," he said, relaxing his posture a bit. "Things are tense. We cut our numbers down back on Franklin, where we got a lot of the supplies we needed to make this work. It's just Tali, Garrus, Liara, Joker, Javik, Vega, and Adams on board now. I didn't want Adams to come, but he insisted. He said he'd already sat out the Collectors and he wasn't going to let you down again."

"He didn't let me down the first time," she said.

"I'm glad to hear that, since I sat that one out too," Kaidan replied. "Tali and Garrus are the only people who don't seem to be slowly losing their minds. Well, Adams and Vega aren't at each other's throats but they're getting a little weird. I haven't seen that much jostling since my locker room days. Liara's very busy being the Shadow Broker. Javik is. . . I don't know what's wrong with Javik. I've suggested to Liara that she work with him, but they had an argument that nearly blew the plating off the hull. Figuratively. He just sits and meditates. Sometimes he doesn't even acknowledge when you talk to him."

"His whole purpose in life was destroying the Reapers," said Shepard. "I'm sure he feels very lost." _I can relate._

"Joker's almost as bad," Kaidan said, nodding. "He keeps to himself. Worse than usual."

"Can I talk to him?" Shepard asked. Kaidan glanced around behind him.

"I don't think he's awake, and I don't want to disturb him if he isn't." Kaidan held his hands out, palm up. "This is a long haul, Shepard. No emergencies on this run. Just the every day. But I could record a message for you to give to him when he wakes up. I could program it to go to his omni tool."

"You really don't want to talk to him," Shepard said, frowning.

"It's gotten pretty bad, Shepard," Kaidan admitted. "And I seem to make it worse."

"I'll make a recording." She didn't want to go. Didn't want to lay there and just think. But he had actual work to do. If he spent all night talking with her he'd be fuzzy.

"How long until you hit Omega?" she said.

"We have to hit either Lorek or Eingana first. We're about three weeks out from either planet. After that, we'll see. It depends on what our mission parameters are," he said.

She studied his face. He was a little older, a little more worn down, than when they'd met. But he hadn't taken near the damage she had. She didn't know what she wanted out of a future now that the fight was done. If she didn't know what she wanted for herself, it seemed impossible to know what she'd want out of him. But one thing was still true.

"I don't think I can live knowing that you died to save me," she said. "It was hard enough with Ash."

"It's going to be fine, Shepard." Kaidan glanced back over his shoulder. "It's getting really late, and I should go make a check of the ship. Skeleton crew means more work for all of us."

"Sure," she said. If she could settle back casually she would. She remembered how calm he'd always been when she visited him at Huerta Memorial. How did he manage that? She felt more like screaming and throwing things. And insisting he stay on the comm with her for the next three weeks.

Without Traynor aboard, that would likely fry the system.

"I love you, Jamie," he said, meeting her eyes. Across billions of kilometers, across star systems, the look on his face could still make her catch her breath. Which was awful because her breath didn't come un-caught for several long moments.

"I love you too, Kaidan," she said. He cut the comm on a grin. She stared at the blank space where he had been for a long, long time.

Something was very wrong.

To say she felt it in her gut was a gross understatement. That could just be the way her heart and lungs were skipping around, playing hell with her digestive tract. Or it could be the leftovers from her recent illness. She really didn't want the details on that.

 _He cut the comm before I could make the recording for Joker._

Something was very, very wrong.

* * *

"Shepard woke up early," Liara said, behind him. Kaidan sighed. He'd heard her come in. She hardly slept anymore. She was at his elbow at the damnedest times of day or night. He hadn't wanted to give her the chance to talk to Shepard. Not before he talked to her. Liara turned her big, blue, accusing eyes on him. "Why did you lie to her?"

Of course she'd been listening in. She was the Shadow Broker. Queen of Spies. Not that she was a particularly good spy herself, but he ought to have expected she'd take the opportunity she was given. He took a deep breath before answering, his mouth cramping on the grin he'd given Shepard.

"She doesn't need to know. Not before. Whatever happens, you can tell her about it after." She'd looked like hell. Her face was splotched brown and pink with burn scars, her hair gone. Her eyes were mismatched, now, one brown and one burning red. She'd looked incredibly vulnerable and delicate propped up in that hospital bed. No way was he telling her his plan. Not when there was nothing she could do about it.

"I can't believe you're going to make me tell her," said Liara, glowering at him. He shook his head.

"I'll make a recording. You can give it to her if I don't make it back," he said. "How's the fuel salvage coming?"

When backed into a corner, change the conversation. It worked with commanding officers, new recruits, and Liara. She checked her omni tool.

"Tali and Garrus told me an hour ago that they only need two more days, here." Liara glared at him from under her eyelashes. "I take it you don't want them to contact Shepard when they get back inside?"

"No one contacts Shepard until we're on Omega," Kaidan said, firmly. "I didn't think that Miranda would wake her up until the day after tomorrow."

"We knew it was going to be an imprecise process," Liara said. She was the one who insisted they ask Miranda to wake Shepard up at all. He'd thought it was too risky. But Liara said that having Shepard on the other end of a communicator might prove necessary. None of them, not even the Shadow Broker, could match Shepard's contacts. She looked almost as exhausted as she had when he'd first seen her, right after they pulled her out of that Prothean ruin. She'd had the biggest job of all of them.

The only way to get everyone home was to make sure the Omega relay got repaired. It would take several more months before any other relays were finished, but the repairs to Omega hadn't even begun because the batarian slavers who had apparently taken over the station had no interest in starting them. Kaidan had his own suspicions about those slavers. They'd just helped Aria retake Omega Station from the Illusive Man, a few weeks before the battle for Earth. Her defenses should have been better than ever. His money was on this whole "batarian slavers" takeover being some kind of ruse. But there was no way to know until they were inside the station.

Regardless, they needed to control Omega Station space. Liara had assembled a group of mercenaries through her contacts as the Shadow Broker. They were assembling on Eingana. The current war between mercenary bands on Lorek had proved too vicious and entrenched even for Liara to break through. Several of those ships had already arrived. All they knew was that the Normandy was part of the Shadow Broker's plan.

They had to work with the intel they had. There was a very real possibility that they wouldn't be able to take Omega Station. They'd talked about infiltration, and about using the Shadow Broker's mercenary troops as back-up. But all information and communication from Omega was locked down tight. Even Liara couldn't get anything. They had no way to plan a war on Omega, and they all remembered from the last time how defensible it was. They had talked it over and over these past five months, and decided to take a more cautious route. They would set up the mercenary fleet, such as it was, as a repair crew out by the relay.

To do that, they would need a static electric discharge station, just like any other space installation. They were all currently very aware of how important that previously-ignored piece of equipment was. But they'd be sending ships around the neighboring systems to salvage materials. They needed the little fleet of mercenary ships to operate like a space station.

Omega had several discharge stations. But Omega was locked down tight in every conceivable way. There were patrols, proximity charges, booby traps. To get one of those stations and pull it loose was a suicide mission as ridiculous and impossible as taking Omega itself.

Unless, just like on Virmire, they had a diversion. Kaidan, Javik, and Vega would slip through and get the data that Miranda needed for Shepard. They'd make lots and lots of noise on their way through. And maybe, with a little luck, they'd make so much noise that no one would notice the Normandy sneaking up. Tali, Garrus, and Liara were going to detach one of the discharge stations and the Normandy was going to tow it out to the mass relay.

The part that no one seemed to like was the part where Kaidan's team would need to keep providing that distraction until well after the Normandy was away. Otherwise, the batarians would just send fighters after the Normandy. There could be no extraction this time.

"Shepard will be devastated. I know she'd prefer if you went with the team to get the discharge station," Liara said, for what must be the thousandth time. Kaidan sighed.

"Yeah. But this is the right call." If he was right about Aria using the batarians as a ruse for some reason, or if by some miracle they blew through the batarian slavers and took control of Omega, he had to be on the station. He was the only person on the ship who had the authority to negotiate with anyone who might be useful. He gestured at the comm unit. "I should make that recording. Before some other damn thing comes up." _You hesitate, you miss your shot. Story of my life._

"I'll be in my office," Liara said. Then she turned and stalked off. Five months of close quarters hadn't improved relationships on this ship. It was a miracle no one had gotten into a fist fight. Maybe if Shepard had been on board things would have been different. She was the person they were all here for, the one who'd gathered them up out of their separate lives.

He leaned against the console for a moment, trying to gather his thoughts. It felt like the last three years he'd been stumbling and falling deeper into this pit where there was no way out and now he'd finally hit bottom. Not with some rogue Spectre, not with the Collectors or Cerberus, not with the Reapers. The fight he wasn't going to walk away from was the fight to save the woman he loved.

His adolescent self would have been so pleased. It was just like one of his favorite books from back when he was a kid.

He set the vid unit to record, then straightened up. He had no idea what he wanted to say. Everything. Nothing.

"I'm sorry, Jamie." First things first. "I know you'd rather be dying for me than the other way around. But this one's my turn. There was always a chance we'd get lucky and make it through without casualties. If you're watching this, we didn't get lucky.

"There's things I want to say, things I never had time to say before. In the end, I think, you remember what the beginning was like. Back on Eden Prime I started falling for you. After you threw me out of the way of that beacon I waited in the med bay for you to wake up. And I realized, watching you, that I wasn't just there out of guilt. I had this fantasy of going out into the galaxy, proving myself in the hardest missions, coming back when we were the same rank. When I was worthy of you. And then, I don't know. Asking you if you wanted a drink. But you. . . for some reason I'll never understand you were interested too. By the time we'd saved those colonists on Feros I knew. I knew I'd never love anyone else the way I love you.

"I always knew this story would end with one of us dying. I always hoped it would be me. We're old soldiers, Shepard. I can't see either one of us retiring to go do something else. The fight is in our blood. And now the fight is over. You, you're a born diplomat. Sorry. But it's true. I've never seen you fail to persuade anyone. In the end. It isn't always quick, but it always works. I'm sorry that I won't be there to see you talk the whole galaxy into co-operation.

"You made my whole life worth it," he said. "Living or dead, I'll love you. Take care of yourself for me. No grief-driven idiocy. You've got a lot of work to do." He nodded, as if dismissing her with her orders. And then he turned the recording off. He stood there for a moment, collecting himself. That was done. Now he had to focus on getting this ship, and its crew, ready for the fight ahead.


	7. To Keep Your Heart Beating

I don't own Mass Effect or any of its characters or settings.

* * *

It wasn't a beat you could dance to. No, it was way too avant garde. No person of any species would be able to move seductively to this rhythm. It was more like a complex, fractal algorithm. Her heartbeat had gone insane.

After Kaidan cut the comm, she didn't have anything to do but think about what he'd said and count her heartbeats.

It would have taken them a little more than five months to get from Watson to Eingana with the FTL drive. Assuming they did something about the static electric build up, which they obviously had. It was a little under 2,000 lightyears. At a rate of twelve or thirteen light-years for every 24-hour day an FTL drive could make that trip in just a little over five months.

She'd been out about five months. Why were they still three weeks out?

They might have taken that long to retrofit the Normandy for their unorthodox trip.

Or maybe Kaidan was lying to her.

He'd never lied to her before. But she didn't doubt for a second that he would do so if he thought it was for her own good. Not about interpersonal things, no, but about a mission.

Her breath and her heartbeat were vying for the most abstract rhythm, and they didn't dance together very often. It _hurt_.

During the years that she'd been dead, he'd been out running high-risk covert ops. And then training other people to run high risk covert ops.

Heart-certainty. If he thought that the truth would upset her and cause her heart rate to spike, he would lie to her.

They could be closing in on Omega right now.

That was why all those plans had sounded wrong. They were wrong. They weren't accurate at all.

Or maybe they sounded wrong because they really were three weeks out from Eingana and they were still polishing them. Maybe she was imagining. . .

"Shepard?" That was Cortez's voice, from behind her. She turned her head to watch him walk up around the side of her bed. His face lit when he saw her, and she smiled despite everything. He was all healed up, moving like he felt good. Still wearing fatigues. He had a soft toy animal of some kind in his hand. He held it out to her. She took it, her arm twitching but compliant for the few seconds it took to take the gift.

"Steve! I'm so glad to see you." She'd never meant anything more. "What is this thing?"

"It's a teddy bear," he said. He didn't look the slightest bit embarrassed to be giving her a toy. "They sell them in the gift shop downstairs. They're supposed to be comforting."

"I love it." She grinned up at him. "Thank you. Pull up a chair and tell me what you've been up to. How did you know where to find me?"

"One of the nurses I've gotten to be friends with told me they took you to this office," he said. He glanced at Miranda's desk chair but he didn't pull it over. Maybe he didn't quite dare to touch it. He must have met Miranda. "I've been here off and on for a few weeks. They've gotten used to me. This is the first time I've seen you awake, though."

"Thank you for coming to see me," she said. "It means a lot to me. I've been going crazy here, and I've only been awake a few hours."

"Then I'm lucky I caught you," Steve said. "I'm about to be shipped out to the Luna base. Some folks want to salvage the VI and materials there for civilian use. High command is letting them have that one. I think it's a pretty bare concession, since Luna was hit so hard by the Reapers there's hardly anything left. I'm going to see what there is worth saving."

"You get to pick your assignments now?" she asked, pleased. He nodded, ducking his head.

"Turns out being part of the old Normandy crew gives a guy a certain celebrity. I won't say I haven't been using that," Steve said. She laughed. Well, she started to puff out her breath on a laugh, and her breath hitched.

"You earned it the hard way," she said. "I was just talking with Kaidan, actually. That's part of why I'm going crazy."

Cortez frowned, crossing his arms and settling back. It was strange to see him without equipment or tools in his hands.

"Yeah, I told Vega that if he went along with the Major's plan you would have his ass. He said that if he dug his heels in that the Major would have his ass, and if he had to piss a Spectre off it was better to piss off the one in the hospital." Cortez shook his head. "I can't say I would do anything different, though."

At least they were all still talking it over. She loved that Kaidan was taking votes, treating her crew like the experts they were. Some commanding officers would just make decisions and pass them down.

"You've been talking to the crew?" she asked. Cortez smiled and shrugged.

"Every couple of weeks, when we catch each other. They've been going crazy stuck up in that ship for damn near a half year. Your actual hospital room is full of those cloth flowers and little data recordings from everybody. Well, not Javik. But everybody else."

"Half a year?" He'd said something after that, but her ear didn't quite parse it. "What do you mean half a year?"

"Well not quite," said Cortez. He was starting to look a little alarmed. "In about ten days it'll be six months since they left Franklin. They've been cooped up on the Normandy that whole time."

 _Five months and two weeks. Plenty of travel time._

 _Kaidan lied to me. They're making the Omega run now._

"That _son_ of a _bitch_!" she hissed, her breath coming short. Cortez jumped, then started forward, his hands hovering over her in helpless terror. "Get me . . ." Goddamnit, her breath was failing her. Little black stars were blossoming at the edge of her vision. She'd lost the rhythm of her disjointed breath and she wasn't going to get it back. "Get. . . me the Nor. . ."

Cortez blurred into white static that blossomed in electric arcs. The abyss swelled up around her like dark water. She sank into it silently, raging, unable even to scream.

* * *

"Two hundred," Kaidan said, completing the push-up. He rose to his feet. Vega groaned and let himself fall, then rolled onto his back.

"You're a machine, loco," Vega said. "How do you keep doing that faster than me? You're ancient."

"I'm thirty six," Kaidan protested. "Not my fault you worry more about bulking up than actually getting stronger."

"Okay," Vega said. "Re-match."

"I need you to be able to move your arms to carry salvage around," Kaidan said. His own shoulders and back were burning but he wasn't about to admit it. Vega couldn't be in much better shape. "And if you think Garrus will. . ."

"Kaidan, get to the comm room." Liara's voice snapped out over the comms. It must be an emergency. Tali, Garrus, Joker, and Adams were all taking their rest cycle now after an intense bout of fuel salvage. Liara wouldn't broadcast to the whole ship it if wasn't an emergency. "Now."

His feet were already moving. He ran to the elevator. Bounced on his heels while he waited it to go up two floors. And then ran again. They'd dismantled the security door before they left Franklin, so he didn't have to stop for the scan. He didn't stop until he hit the door of the comm room.

Miranda and Cortez were standing in the holographic screen. Cortez looked miserable. Kaidan had only seen him that dejected once, while he was visiting the memorial for his husband and all the other colonists who died with him.

 _It's Shepard._

"I told you it was too risky," said Miranda. Liara looked like she might be about to burst into tears. "I should never have let you persuade me to wake her."

"What happened?" Kaidan cut through their argument. Miranda's head shot up, she favored him with a burning glare, then she turned it on poor Cortez.

"Answer him," Miranda snapped. Cortez didn't flinch but he did give her a very wary look.

"I came to visit Shepard. We talked about the Normandy. And she asked me how long you had been out in deep space. I told her, it had been a little under six months. And she started cursing." He closed his eyes, as if steeling himself against some memory. "She passed out."

"And I'm not waking her again," said Miranda.

"I thought that she could handle a few days. There were reports of rachni in this area. They haven't talked to anyone but they would talk to Shepard. I thought it would be a small risk to her," Liara said. Miranda leaned forward and pointed at Liara.

"Then you should have listened to me more carefully," Miranda said, her voice very cold. "I told you her heart and lungs were beating arythmically. That if she got upset she could do herself some real damage. But no. You wanted her to negotiate with giant spiders!"

"Enough!" Kiadan shouted. "This isn't anyone's fault. You were all doing what you thought was best at the time. Shepard would understand that."

"I'm still sorry," said Cortez. "She was trying to tell me to get the Normandy on the comm when she passed out."

"I'm afraid that will have to wait," said Miranda. "She's obviously figured out that you are all very close to Omega now. She's very fragile and she'll never be calm while you're off getting yourself marooned on a death trap."

 _Thanks_. There were some solid reasons he didn't get along with Miranda. But no one could fault her work ethic. Or her results.

"So she has to stay unconscious until you're able to fix her implants," said Liara. Miranda shook her head.

"Sooner would be better than later. I took some readings. She's deteriorating. Even sedated she's exhibiting signs of stress," Miranda said.

"Like, she's dreaming?" asked Kaidan. Miranda shrugged.

"I just know that her adrenal glands are working too hard," she said, "and it's putting a lot of stress on a system that's already maxed out. If you can't get me that data within a few days I won't be able to guarantee success."

"If we take too long to get to Omega, Shepard's malfunctioning implants might kill her?" Kaidan repeated. "What happened to her having years before the stress put too much strain on her system?"

"It's worse than I thought it would be," said Miranda. "She's been living from crisis to crisis for years. She's taken more damage than anyone else I've ever seen. Twice. So my estimates were a bit off. I'm human. I make mistakes."

"Fine," Kaidan said. He glanced at Liara. Her expression was very guarded, but her eyes were wide and frightened. "Then we're going to Omega."

* * *

The schematics he had of Omega were obviously outdated.

They'd gotten a lot of their current intel on Omega from General Petrovsky. The Alliance hadn't let him go after the war was over. The official line was that the war with the Reapers might be won, but the war against Cerberus was still getting mopped up. In the piles of intel that Petrovsky had provided were the schematics for Omega as it had been under his command. The battle to take Omega back from Petrovsky and his Cerberus forces was less than a year ago. But even the outer defenses were different. He couldn't speak to the interior, yet.

He was standing in the old war room, in all of his gear, barely an hour out from launching the assault on Omega. He needed to give the last mission brief to his two teams. But he kept going over the schematics.

Something wasn't right. Petrovsky had beefed up the outer defenses, but they were even more vastly overbuilt now. Aria had suffered having Omega taken from her. According to Shepard, she'd lost a lover and a lot of her people taking it back. And she'd obviously improved some of the defenses so that wouldn't happen again. But then a group of batarian slavers had just overrun the place? How?

The more he looked at it, the less sense that made. This had to be a ruse. A plan of Aria's.

He walked into the comm room and punched up Major Leuss, who was in charge of their high-ranking POWs. The man answered his comm in minutes. He was very crisp and clean, every inch the model soldier.

"Major Alenko," Major Leuss saluted. Kaidan saluted back. "What can I do for you?"

"I need to speak with General Petrovsky. I don't have very much time, but he may have intel that is vital to my current mission," said Kaidan. Major Leuss frowned, and looked something up on his omni tool.

"That is very irregular. But. . . your Spectre authority. . . yes. I will see to it that he is brought before a communication array immediately." Major Leuss saluted again and winked out. Kaidan sighed. He'd never been very good at all the heel clicking. Proper military procedure hadn't been a big priority out on Jump Zero, and he'd never really gotten used to it when he rejoined the military later. Serving with Shepard didn't help. She was worse about that than he was.

After only a few moments a middle aged man appeared in the screen. His hair and beard were trimmed with lazer precision. But he wore plain white civilian clothes. He did not salute. He merely raised his eyebrows.

"Spectre Alenko," he said. Interesting. People usually didn't call him that. "I was given to understand that you have a matter of some urgency that requires my attention."

Yeah, this guy definitely used to be a General.

"I'll cut right to the chase," said Kaidan. He had no idea what sort of protocol he ought to use for a POW that ranked higher than him in some terrorist organization, and he certainly wasn't going to waste the brain space figuring it out. "I'm about to run a high-risk operation on Omega. I have the schematics you gave to the Alliance. But I need to know if there's any information that you left out."

"No hard data, no," said Petrovsky. He folded his hands behind his back and came to parade rest. "I did not include my impressions, as they are hardly military secrets."

"What were your impressions?" Kaidan asked.

"Aria T'Loak is a ruthless and merciless adversary. But she is not a sociopath. Just before I was escorted off the station she was talking to her people about their new freedom, about how after they ousted Cerberus they were going to bury and mourn their dead. If she was the woman I originally thought she was, she would have executed every Cerberus operative on Omega. Beginning with me," Petrovsky said. He was pretty matter-of-fact about that. "I believe it was Commander Shepard's influence that brought out that side to her."

"Shepard said it was Nyreen, the turian that Aria was close to," said Kaidan. Though he wasn't especially surprised.

"I disagree," Petrovsky said. But Kaidan didn't really want to waste time listening to the rest of his psychological impressions. He'd thought the man meant military impressions. What a waste.

"What do you think Aria did right after you left?" he asked. Petrovsky shrugged.

"There's no question. She was very passionate about retaining control of Omega. Her old military tactics didn't work. She will have set different defenses in play. Different strategies. She's been alive longer than both of us put together. There's no way to know what those strategies are."

"Thank you," Kaidan said. He glanced behind him at the war room. His teams were gathering. Everyone was there but Joker. But then, Joker probably wasn't coming. He'd been glued to his pilot's seat since they left Eingana. It seemed to cheer him up to fly. "I'd better go."

"Maybe sometime we can play chess, Spectre Alenko," Petrovsky said. He nodded. Kaidan just cut the comm. _No chance. Guy must be lonely as hell._

Kaidan walked down the metal steps into the war room.

"Is there any new intel?" Garrus asked. Even in all the time they'd spent in deep space Kaidan had never seen the turian without his armor. Kaidan snorted.

"Just another vote in favor of my theory that the batarian slavers who run the comms don't actually have control of Omega," Kaidan said. Garrus shook his head.

"She wouldn't keep a ruse like that up for this long. Half of her influence came from her reputation as an unstoppable, ruthless dictator. Hiding behind an unpopular refugee group wouldn't bolster that reputation," Garrus said. Kaidan held up his hands in surrender.

"We go in like we're expecting the station to be held by hostile forces." Hell, just before the Crucible was completed Shepard had helped Aria retake Omega. She'd done it with the support of the lead enforcers and the citizens of Omega, but she'd had to fight her way through most of the station before the reinforcements even mattered. Maybe he and his little strike force could pull the same thing off against a batarian army.

And maybe a magical space fairy would turn all his field rations into seared steak.

"How does your team look?" Kaidan asked Tali. Garrus hadn't even argued about her being in charge of the tech team. If a problem came up, she was the one who would have to make the call on how to fix it. Tali nodded enthusiastically.

"We're good to go. We've got the final station schematics from the long range scanners. The kinetic barrier that Shepard mentioned is still up, and the Normandy wouldn't be able to breach it. But it's very close around the station. The surveillance drones and booby traps are outside it. And so are at least three of the discharging stations. We'll approach one of those in stealth mode after dropping you off and we'll have it hooked up to the back of the Normandy in no time." She glanced around. "I mean, I still have concerns that we'll be able to get out of there without getting fired on. We won't be very stealthy while we tow a two-ton piece of equipment through space."

"Joker says he can get you guys out," Kaidan reminded her. "And he hasn't failed yet."

"As best as I can tell," Liara said, staring at her data pad instead of making eye contact, "the kinetic barrier they're using will stop anything big enough to actually fly out here. But a small shuttle should be able to get through. They have to let repair and recon teams through, and their shuttles won't be any smaller than ours."

"If we get stopped by the kinetic barrier we'll make our way back to the Normandy," said Kaidan. "And we'll all regroup."

"Yeah, but we don't exactly have a Plan B," Vega said. Kaidan's jaw clenched, and he had to work to loosen it enough to speak calmly. His nerves were bad enough as it was.

"This is a solid plan. But if it doesn't work we're going to try something else," he said. He hoped he sounded much more confident than he felt. "My team is going to go in with the shuttle, and start shooting. In the very unlikely event that the old Cerberus hangar is full of civilians or noncombatants we'll upload the data to the Normandy and then go _find_ some combatants. Otherwise, the plan is to be very loud on our way to get the data. Liara, when the Normandy is clear you'll contact me and my team will go to ground. With any luck we'll be able to stay in contact. Then we'll look for an opportunity to rejoin you."

Everyone was silent for a moment. They'd talked and talked about that part of the plan. The chances of coming back from that were pretty slim. He had a lot of confidence in their ability to survive the initial assault. It would be just like old times. But who knew what the real situation was on Omega? One of the batarians who answered the comm pretty regularly was very anti-human. Maybe he and Vega would be executed on vid.

 _No. Think about getting to Earth again_. It would be just starting to recover from the Reaper attacks by the time he got there. People were saying the first mass relays would be ready inside of a year. Earth, Palaven, Thessia, and the Serpent Nebula were high priority relays. He'd bring his team through this. And then he'd get to go home.

He could show Shepard English Bay. Hug his mom. Go out to the old family orchard, see what trees were left. Yeah. He'd brought teams through worse things than this. He'd never acted without an exit strategy before but there was a first time for everything.

"Everybody clear on the plan?" he asked, gathering them all in by eye. Everyone nodded, grave. Serious. But not worried. He had the privilege of working with some of the smartest, toughest, most resourceful people in the galaxy.

Hell, he ought to at least tell them so.

"You're the most experienced and resourceful people I've ever known," he said. Liara actually looked up from her data pad, startled. "There isn't anything we can't do. This mission is a little different, but we've gotten out of tighter spots. It's just one last risk we have to take before we can all go home." He nodded encouragingly. They didn't look terribly reassured, but at least they didn't look pissed.

"Good speech, Kaidan," Joker said. Kaidan grinned. He hadn't thought Joker would be listening in. The tone was deeply sarcastic, but those were some of the nicest words Joker had said to him all trip. "We're about ten minutes out. Thought you guys might want to get going."

"Let's do this," Kaidan said. He gave Tali a confident smile and turned to leave. Javik and Vega fell in behind him. While they were riding down the elevator Vega kept glancing at him, and shaking his head a little.

"What?" he said, as the doors opened on the shuttle bay.

"You're smiling," Vega said. "That's loco."

"It will be good to have something to shoot," Javik said. Kaidan laughed. Then he noticed Vega was looking at both him and Javik like they'd lost their minds and he laughed harder.

"He's right, it will," said Kaidan. "And I bet between the two of us we'll make plenty of biotic explosions."

"I would not have come if I did not agree," said Javik. It was still hard to read the Prothean features, but Kaidan would have sworn he was grinning too. They'd definitely been shut up in the Normandy for far too long. Kaidan opened the shuttle and waved Javik in, then Vega. He got in last and shut the door behind them. Vega was already settling into the drivers seat. Having seen him drive, Kaidan approved. They needed something crazy and reckless just now.

"Besides, I've never seen Omega," Kaidan said. "If nothing else it will be a new corner of the galaxy. A new adventure."

"Yeah, okay, loco." Vega started the shuttle up. "Glad you're having a good time."

They settled in and got ready for the drop. It was only a few minutes until the shuttle bay doors opened. They shot out into space. Omega shone orange like fire. Their destination was pulled up on a navigation schematic in front of Vega. He only had to deviate twice to avoid booby traps. Then they were approaching the kinetic barrier.

Kaidan held his breath. Everything rode on this. In the next minute they were going to either fry, bounce off, or get through. If they didn't get through Vega was right. There was no Plan B. And Shepard's time was running out.

They passed through with barely a blip. Everyone breathed a heavy sigh. Relief was so thick on the air he could almost taste it. But there was no time to waste. Kaidan pointed past Vega.

"That airlock there is the one we want," he said. "We need to make an entrance. Let's shoot our way in."

"Loco," Vega muttered. But he fired two shots at the airlock door. Then he hit the brakes just before they punched through the hole he'd made. They screeched through the damaged doors and came to a skittering, screaming halt just before they hit the inner doors of the airlock. The shuttle was wrecked, the screen shattered. But they were unhurt.

One miracle down, several more to go.

"Way to go!" Kaidan cried, clapping Vega on the shoulder. "I knew you were the man for the job. Let's move!"

The three of them poured out of the damaged shuttle in their mag boots and headed straight for the observation office. Most airlocks had them, little side rooms that had a door on either side of the inner lock. It was an added security measure. Filled with Loki mechs, usually.

This one was no exception.

Kaidan overrode the lock on this side. As soon as he opened the door there was a Loki mech there, standing ready to kill the intruders. The old thrill of combat rushed through his blood. _Now it gets fun._

He overloaded its circuits and ducked back around the door for cover. Javik pulled the other two mechs toward them, and Vega shot them both while they were being yanked off their feet. Then the three of them clomped into the observation office and shut the door behind them.

Kaidan left his helmet on, in case someone got the bright idea of venting the airlock to flush them out, and he signaled the others to do the same. They turned off their mag boots and gathered around the other door, the one that was on the inside of both air locks. Red lights flashed down on them. Somewhere, not too far away, a siren was blaring.

Good so far.

This door was locked, too. It took Kaidan a few precious seconds to override it. And then they were inside Omega.

This bay was mostly a hangar with a transport repair facility attached to it. Everything was brown, organic, red. It was a little bit like being inside a hive. There were old barricades, old battle scars, some repurposed to hold damaged equipment and some fresh.

Five Loki mechs and two Fenris had already gotten there. Or maybe they had been left there. Kaidan overloaded the Fenris mech that was bounding toward them, then finished it off with his assault rifle. Javik had already thrown a lift grenade into the midst of the Loki mechs. Vega had the other Fenris mech, it looked like he'd tried using Carnage on it and now was having to fight it off with his submachine gun. Kaidan's eye found the loft with the glassed-in office, that was where Miranda had said he would find the data.

These guys could handle a couple of basic attack mechs. Kaidan started for the office at a dead run, sprinting from cover to cover. He was only about five feet from the ladder when he heard it.

 _Whir chink. Chirrrr whirr chink._

He crouched low and spun around. Sure enough, there was an Atlas headed toward them. Headed for Javik, actually, who was handling the Loki mechs on his own. It looked like the Prothean voice of Vengeance was taking out the accumulated frustration of almost six months without a task or purpose. If it had been just the Loki mechs Kaidan might have left him to it. He was ferocious as Shepard in a mood, dealing death too fast for the eye to follow. But he couldn't take an Atlas.

Kaidan hit it with Reave, and then he and James were both trying to drown it in a hail of bullets. Javik dealt with the last Loki mech and turned with a guttural howl to launch himself at the Atlas.

 _He can't be thinking of going after that thing bare-handed._

Kaidan launched another Reave attack, and he saw Vega hitting it with Carnage. Maybe they were both trying to blow the thing up before Javik could get there.

But the Prothean wasn't trying to go after it bare-handed. He stopped ten meters away and threw out one of his Dark Channels. When that hit the mass effect field that was generated by Reave it must have triggered a biotic explosion. Blue light flared out, and the Atlas exploded in a hail of fiery metal.

Kaidan grinned and ran for the ladder up to the office. There was a longer way, with stairs, but this access catwalk ran right to it. The catwalk ran right past the big glass windows. He ran up to them, shot through them, and then climbed over the jagged shards.

That data had to be at one of these comm consoles.

He ran his omni tool over the first one. Miranda had provided him with a program that would open up the data cache. Then there was a program that would provide the right passcodes and get him access to Project Lazarus. Then Tali had given him an omni tool program that could transmit everything he'd found to her back on the Normandy.

If he could find the right comm console his job was to stand there long enough for the tech to do the work. Hopefully he wouldn't get shot while he was doing so.

This wasn't the right one. He moved on to the next. No. But the third one was. He started the protocols running. Outside things were getting loud again. Vega was testing the limits of his vocabulary, trying to egg the Omega forces on. Javik was saying some pretty cutting things too, but most of them were about Vega. There must be living troops out there and not just mechs. Otherwise, why bother?

This was taking an eternity.

He had never felt so tense in his entire life. He could keep an eye on three of teh five points of entry into this room, but he couldn't move around too much. He had his pistol out and ready. But he expected every second to catch a bullet in the back of his head.

There was another explosion, then things got quiet again. Did that mean that Vega and Javik had killed the first wave of Omega troops, or did that mean they were dead?

He forced himself to stay still, to breathe. He could go check on them when the programs were finished running. If they were already dead there was nothing he could do. And if they were fine, they were fine.

He could practically feel the soldier standing behind him waiting to put one in the back of his head. He looked, but there was no one there. He was just twitchy. Exposed. Very exposed. How long before someone came to check out this office?

"Complete," said Tali's voice from his omni tool. It wasn't really her. It was just a recording so that he'd know she had the data. He could feel himself smiling even as he went to look out the big glass window into the hangar bay. No matter what happened from this point on, Miranda would be able to fix Shepard's implants.

He crouched behind the solid brown firematting of the wall and looked through the window. Javik and Vega were still out there, in cover. But there was a troop moving in. It was mostly batarian and turian.

Interesting. Would turians really be helping batarian slavers?

Who was he kidding? This was Omega. Lawless, kill-or-be-killed Omega. For all he knew the slavers had taken over the street gangs.

He stayed low so that maybe they wouldn't see him and went back the way he came in. He slowly, quietly eased himself back onto the catwalk. He could get down from here, and he could see them. They were still bunched up, just coming in from the station access doors. He pulled _cold_ out of himself and threw a cryo blast at the center of their group. Then he stood up and shot a few of them, just to make sure they knew where he was, before dropping down off the catwalk and sprinting to cover. They'd only hit him a few times while he was up there grandstanding and they hadn't managed to breach his shields.

He heard the heavy, crackling snap of a frag grenade, and the shouts of the Omega troops. He leaned out from cover and got a few shots in. There were only twenty or so left.

Just like old times.

He moved up, sprinting from cover to cover. Then he pulled a few of them off their feet, and Javik hit them with his dark channel, setting off more biotic explosions. The Prothean was in his element. He was standing on top of a crate, firing bullets and biotic attacks every other second.

Blue energy crackled around him, and he felt like someone had dropped a boulder on his chest. Stasis! Heavy stasis. He'd never seen or felt anything so complete, it felt like there were iron bands wrapped around every part of him. Javik had stopped moving, too, and, and where was Vega?

"What the hell is going on down here?" screamed a woman. The room was filling with asari commandos and batarians in black armor. An asari in black pants, a club-wear top and a cropped white jacket moved into his limited field of view. She walked like she owned the place, like their offensive was a minor irritation to her.

That was probably Aria. She certainly matched the descriptions.

 _I wish I could be more happy that I was right._

"Major Alenko?" the asari who was probably Aria said, her lip curled up in a disbelieving sneer. She got close, looked him up and down. Her glower never faded. "Loosen him up, I want to ask some questions."

An asari in black combat armor made a gesture with her hands, and he felt like maybe he could breathe. But then another one put a barrier bubble around him. He had a feeling this was the type of barrier that no ammo would penetrate. He didn't at all want to test the

"A sanctimonious Alliance pig, his pet water bug and a human meat shield crash a shuttle into Omega. Why?" Aria asked.

Okay, so not the best start.

"Everyone thinks you're dead," Kaidan said. "You obviously want them to. Why the ruse with the batarian slavers?"

"No. No, no," Aria said. "I ask the goddamn questions. What the fuck are you doing here?"

"Shepard's alive," Kaidan said. He had no idea how much of the galactic news Aria was getting. "But her cybernetic implants are malfunctioning. In order to fix them we needed data from that office. Cerberus data. If we had known you were alive we would have just called."

"If Shepard needed data she should have called herself," Aria said. "I had her voice programmed into my vocal recognition software. I would have answered."

So Liara was right and there was a reason to wake her up. Except it was too late by then.

"Shepard's been unconscious for months," Kaidan said. "She's in bad shape. But she mentioned that you were friends. If that's true, you should let us go back to our fleet."

"Friends?" Aria said, stalking a predatory circle around his barrier. "More like we found each other useful. And you're not Shepard. You blew up my airlock, you killed my men. You're lucky to be breathing my air right now."

Okay. This was really not going well.

"I'm still a Council Spectre," he said, quietly. "Shepard mentioned you were very practical. Killing me, or those two members of Shepard's own crew, would be very impractical. Alive we might be a resource. Or a bargaining chip. Dead we're just a liability."

"I know," Aria said, over her shoulder. Her back was to him and he couldn't see her face, but she sounded resigned. "Put them in cryo stasis until I decide what use they may have."

"What?" Kaidan snapped. She didn't even turn around.

"I'm not stupid enough to kill you. Shepard always took her crew a little too personally and if she really is on the mend I do not want that woman blowing in my door looking for vengeance. But I'm not wasting manpower on guarding you." Aria started to walk away. She waved over her shoulder at him, just a little wiggle of her fingers. "See you if you wake up."

Something heavy struck him from behind. He fell flat to the floor, crushed, almost unable to breathe. It was the barrier. Someone hit his head, hard enough to daze him, and he was locked in biotic cuffs. No way to hack those or hit them with his power unless he wanted to blow his hands off. Then he was hauled to his feet. A batarian punched him in hte solar plexus hard enough to double him over without changing expression. Then they wrapped him in synthatape, from shoulder to hip. No escape. No getting out.

He couldn't see Javik or Vega. He was shoved, told to walk. When he didn't do it they knocked him down and two of the turians picked him up. They walked him through several brown, dingy rooms. He couldn't even get the breath to scream, just to curse at them. They didn't seem to care.

He hadn't even heard from the Normandy yet. Anything could have gone wrong with the tech team. Anything.

They put him in a cryo pod without taking the restraints off. Or his armor. They didn't even talk with him while they punched up the controls to freeze him.

 _It's not the end. Anything could happen._

But he wouldn't have any control over what happened next. He could wake up in a day, a year, a hundred years. What were the odds that a captured soldier frozen on Omega would be forgotten, shuffled around, in the constant power struggle? He could never wake up at all.

" _You did want me to wake you the next time," Shepard said. There was a rueful smile on her lips. She'd woken him with a kiss, leaning over him in the bed. She was dressed already. He traced a hand down the curve of her cheek, silently asking if she might want to get back undressed and come back to bed. But she just grinned and stood up. She never stopped. And he loved it, even when it meant he was just laying there watching her check her guns and get ready for the day instead of pulling her down to him._

At least, looking back, there were plenty of good moments. He'd crammed a lot of them in toward the end but they still counted. It was more than he'd ever expected. So few regrets. Even now, he was a lucky man.

As the pod lowered down into the stasis chamber he heard his omni tool crackle. He couldn't get to it, but it was set to answer certain calls no matter what. He didn't ever plan on having his hands free in a fire fight.

"Kaidan." That was Liara's voice. His pod hit the bottom of the stasis chamber. Down in the absolute dark there was no air. The vents opened, but he knew they wouldn't be bringing back light and wind. He heard the machine moving in the dark and knew that there were only a few seconds left before he was frozen. "The Nor. . ."


	8. Because Your Heart is My Heart

I do not own Mass Effect or any of its characters or settings. Thank you for reading!

* * *

Sunlight on her face. She felt like she'd been locked in a terrible dream, but it was fading fast and she had absolutely no urge to try and remember it. She felt like she'd been hit by a shuttle. But every breath brought a clean, cool wind to her. She opened her eyes. The sunlight was real sunlight, not just a heat lamp. A window let light and air in to her. It was only cracked open, but she could smell something that very closely resembled a spring morning.

Of all the ways and places she'd expected to wake up, this was pretty far down the list.

Everything ached, but her heart and breath were steady. She could move, a little, but it was hard. Like she was in an increased gravity field and someone had turned off the safety parameters.

She was in a hospital room. Someone had left her a small soft child's toy in the crook of her bed, between her elbow and the rail. She remembered something about that. Something about Cortez, and something being terribly wrong.

The room itself was bright and cheerful. The walls were a fresh, clean white. Paint, not fireproof matting. So she wasn't on a colony. Every surface in the room was covered in cloth flowers, data pads with cheerful pictures flickering on them, little shiny mementos. It looked like a shrine to something.

 _I hope it's not a shrine to me._

There was a tiny white table right by her bed with a glass of water and a holo playback device on it. The kind that could be hooked up to a comm system and set to play the recordings taken there. Maybe if she played it there would be some answers.

It took a few tries, but she managed to hit the play button. Liara's image appeared in tiny blue form. Her old friend looked the same as ever. That had to be a good sign.

"Good morning, Shepard," Liara's recording said. "It's the twenty-eighth of May, 2188. You've been in and out of consciousness since the battle for Earth a little more than six months ago. I'm not sure how much of that you remember.

"Earth is safe. The Reapers are dead. You were rescued but you took a lot of damage, and your implants were malfunctioning. Miranda has done a lot of work to get you up to speed. You're now firmly on the road to recovery. The Normandy and its crew are at the relay into the Omega System, trying to repair it. We're about two years away from getting the relay fixed."

That was all fine, and good, but something was wrong. Something about Omega, and Kaidan. She remembered talking to him, remembered panic.

"The good news is that the galaxy is holding together for the most part. The only issue outstanding seems to be the rachni. Their ships are drifting through every system we still have contact with. They never communicate, but there have been skirmishes. It's unclear if the rachni were the aggressors or if they were just defending themselves, but many planetary governments are preparing for another rachni war.

"The bad news - if the rachni war doesn't count, which at the moment I don't suppose it does - is that there is still no word from Major Alenko's ground team. He landed on Omega with James Vega and Javik in order to get the data Miranda needed to fix your implants. He sent the data, but that was his last transmission. It's been almost two weeks."

That was it. She closed her eyes, but she couldn't help picturing Kaidan lying lifeless on the brown and gray floors of Omega.

"If I have learned one thing from these past few years, it is the importance of hope," Liara said. "You never gave up on anything else. Don't give up on them." She smiled, and ducked her head. "And give me a call when you wake up."

The hologram stopped, frozen. Just a recording.

There was no comm system in this room. Shepard lay her head back, and looked out the window. There was a little patch of brown and green grass outside, with a few violets growing out of it. Not a bad view.

But she'd rather be looking at the faces of her crew. She had a picture of all of them once, hanging in her apartment on the Citadel. That apartment had to be rubble by now. Or cinders.

 _Damnit, Kaidan. What the hell trouble did you get into?_

This must be a tiny taste of what it was like for him after she did a crazy stunt. She didn't like it one bit.

She wanted to jump out of bed and get moving, get working on figuring out how to bring her crew home. All of them. And the rachni wouldn't start a war now, would they? Plenty of people had said she shouldn't trust the rachni queen. Including Kaidan.

 _Damnit, Kaidan. You're not allowed to be dead._

She belonged out there in the stars, working. Not here lying on some hospital bed.

She tried to sit up. Swing her legs out of bed. She only managed to nearly fall out of the bed, so she lay back down. She felt nauseous just from that little exertion.

None of the other data readers were in reach. She didn't have anything to do but stare out the window.

What a waste of time. Surely being dead would have been less boring. If they weren't even going to give her a comm to work with, why did they bother rescuing her at all? It was a lot of time and money to spend on an ornamental Commander.

Eventually a woman in a green uniform opened the door to her room. She stopped dead when she saw Shepard was awake, her eyebrows climbing for her hairline.

"Commander! How long have you been awake?" the woman said. Shepard glanced around. There was no timekeeping device in here.

"Not before sunrise," she reported. It was as accurate as she could get. Her voice was a hoarse croak. The woman hurried across the room and helped her with the water. Her throat felt better, but her nausea was much worse. How could _water_ turn her stomach?

"I'm Doctor Lumen," the woman said. She moved to the bed and began checking Shepard's pulse, her eyes, listening to her lungs. Apparently satisfied, she moved to check one of the machines. "You seem to be recovering very well, Commander. It's good to see."

"That's great," said Shepard. "How soon until I can get out of here?" Dr. Lumen stopped and turned to look at her, incredulous.

"You just woke up after seventeen major surgeries spread out over five months, two of which were less than a week ago, and you want to know when you'll be out of here." Dr. Lumen shook her head, laughing a little. "You soldiers. Commander, you're lucky to be alive at all."

"Yep, that's me," Shepard agreed. "But really. When do I get out of here?"

Dr. Lumen's amusement faded, and she went back to checking the machine. She eventually favored Shepard with a cool, clinical look. Shepard waited for her to answer. It wasn't a complicated question, damnit.

"You should be able to begin your physical therapy in two or three weeks," said Dr. Lumen. "After that we'll see."

"Thank you," Shepard said. She didn't feel particularly grateful but she was going to need this woman's good will later. "Will you please put a comm unit in this room? And get me an omni tool."

"Patients do not get communication units," Dr. Lumen said. Shepard raised her eyebrows. "They're not exactly plentiful. There's more demand for comm units than can be met."

"I'm not just a patient, Doctor," Shepard said. This woman had to see Commanders all the time, that wouldn't impress her. "I'm a Council Spectre. I've got a lot of people spread out over the galaxy and I've been out of the loop for months. I need to know what they're doing."

"Right now you're a patient," Dr. Lumen said. She wasn't even impressed by the Spectre thing. It was like she had hardly listened to Shepard's argument at all. "I'll let your other attending physicians know that you've woken up. Ms. Lawson will be especially interested."

Mostly naked, she just didn't have the same authority as she did in a suit of armor.

Dr. Lumen left. And she had nothing to do but stare at the walls. And think about all the people who kept dying around her while she kept being lucky to be alive. It hurt to remember. But surely forgetting any one of them would be the worst insult imaginable.

" _Shepard-Commander?"_

" _You know it's the right decision, L.T."_

" _These damn batarians are going to pay for the blitz!"_

" _Would have liked to study those sea shells."_

" _Not many are as crazy as you, Lola."_

Was James dead? Was Javik? Was Kaidan?

" _I love you, Shepard." He said it without hesitation, without embarrassment or fear. How did he do that? "I always have, all these years."_

Not knowing was going to kill her faster than any injury ever could.

She didn't know how long it was until Miranda came to her room. The sun hadn't set. But she knew that it felt like several small eternities.

"Where the hell have you been?" she snapped. Then she closed her eyes, silently berating herself. Miranda just came over to the bed and started checking readings and machines, with no change of expression. "Sorry. I saw Liara's recording and it's driving me insane not knowing more."

"I'm sure it is," said Miranda. Apparently everything was fine, because she leaned back and crossed her arms under her breasts. "I would have been by sooner, but I've got my own project. The more stable you get the more time I can devote to it."

"What project is that?" Shepard asked. The first image that popped into her mind was that horrible husk head hooked up to wires in Dr. Bryson's lab.

"It's sort of a new take on cloning technology," Miranda said. "You know we can grow almost anything in a tank. But there are limits. It's not like having a child, not really. A tank-bred person is fully grown when they arrive in the world, and their education is very limited."

"Like Grunt," Shepard nodded. "And all those krogan that Saren had on Virmire."

"Exactly," said Miranda. "It's never been practical to grow humans that way. Some have tried, of course. But not as a way to have actual children. Only as a way to experiment."

"You want kids," Shepard realized, out loud. If she could have clapped her hands over her mouth she would have. But Miranda didn't seem perturbed to be found out. In fact, her mouth twisted to the side in some dark amusement.

"I told you my father wanted to control my DNA," she said. "He made sure I was never going to be able to have children of my own. Not without resorting to the same methods he used to create me."

"That's pretty sick," Shepard said, fascinated. _Would it be rude to ask how he created you?_

"I may have found a way around that," Miranda said. "And I'm not the only person it would help. Lots of people want children but can't have them."

"What have you figured out so far?" Shepard asked.

"Warlord Okeer wasn't just cloning himself, he was doing a lot of genetic experimentation," Miranda said. "I used a lot of data from Grunt's tank, and borrowed a lot from asari physiology. The real breakthrough came from some of Dr. Brynn Cole's work on nutrient transfers. What I'm working on is a type of uterine replicator. So that anyone, of any species, can do with technology what the asari do naturally."

"And they'd have a baby at the end of the process," said Shepard. "Not an adult grown in a tank."

"That's the most important part." Miranda nodded. "There's so much we teach our children. It takes years for a human to grasp the basics of our culture. Even the krogan object to tank-bred people because they just don't know as much about being a krogan as a natural-born child would."

"I gotta say, Miranda, I'm impressed." Shepard smiled up at her. It felt like Miranda was coming to the light at the end of a long, circuitous stumble in the dark. She'd known her as a Cerberus agent, as a tense and angry fugitive. But now she was something better. Something much healthier.

If only she could see all of her soldiers move on so well with their lives she'd be a very happy woman.

"Well, you should be." Miranda unfolded her arm to hold out a hand palm up toward Shepard. "It's impressive. So is the work I've done on you. We have a conundrum, Commander."

"What's that?"

"I'm not going to let you wreck all my good work by stressing yourself out until you have a relapse. I understand you want a comm unit put in. I can get one for you, but I really don't think it's a good idea. I think you're going to try to fix the whole galaxy by yourself, right from that hospital bed. Again."

 _Tread lightly. She can leave you sitting here not knowing for as long as she wants to._

She'd brokered peace between hereditary enemies. Her negotiation skills were legendary. _Now for something really challenging- get Miranda Lawson to go against her better judgment._

"I think I'll be more stressed if I don't have some contact with the outside world," said Shepard. "It's not just that it will give me a chance to check in with my crew. I'll also get to talk to my friends. Not knowing. . . not knowing is going to make me crazy. That's real stress."

Miranda considered this for a long moment. Shepard tried to look lonely, but co-operative.

"All right. We'll give it a try." Miranda called up her omni tool and punched in an order. "Some ensigns will bring you a comm unit. I take it you're going to want clothes again?"

"Yes," Shepard said. "Please."

This time took longer, because of the tubes in her arms. Shepard wasn't sure that the plain, short robe Miranda was putting on her counted as clothes, exactly. But she was going to take what she could get. While they were about it Miranda went ahead and helped Shepard with the water, and checked all of her tube ports to make sure they were functioning correctly. Two ensigns came in with her new comm unit just as Miranda was finishing with her left femoral port. One of the ensigns handed Miranda a small civilian omni tool. She fixed it to Shepard's arm.

"Can you move your hand well enough to use that?" Miranda asked. Shepard tried. She could bring her arms together, and reach the omni tool. But getting her hands to move in the tiny, specific ways that she needed to use the damn thing was very difficult. Miranda watched her for a moment, eyebrows raised.

"Well, that will keep you out of some trouble at least," Miranda said at last. "It might even help you regain your motor control faster. Good."

"This is not good," Shepard said between clenched teeth. Miranda just snorted at her.

"Well, keep at it." She walked to the door, and motioned to the ensigns to follow her out. "Have a good night, Shepard."

"You too," Shepard said reflexively.

It took her a lot longer than she was happy with to get the comm unit to hail the Normandy. And then it took a few minutes for anyone to answer. Eventually Garrus appeared on the screen.

"Hey there, Shepard, about time you woke up," Garrus said. "Did you get the card I told Cortez to give to you?"

"This room is covered in crap and none it it's within reach," Shepard said. "So no. Where are you guys?"

"We're out by the mass relay in Omega. Not the Omega 4 relay, the useful one. We picked up the dregs of several mercenary fleets that were too slow, too selfish, or too useless to join the fight against the Reapers and we're trying to repair the relay," Garrus said. "I'm pretty sure we'll all run out of food a long time before we get that job done. These folks aren't exactly the best the galaxy has to offer. But it's either this or just drift around hoping someone else takes care of it. So here we are."

"It's nice to see your optimism," said Shepard. "I thought you and Tali had a thing going? I would have thought you'd be more cheerful."

"Tali's great, Shepard," Garrus said. He shook his head. "But we're keeping our biotainer suits on, so to speak. So no. Cheerful is not the word. I think the word is 'frustrated.'"

"You've been stuck together on the Normandy since I went down," Shepard said. "Not to pry, but, I'm prying. What's up with that?"

"I feel like such an _ass_ , Shepard," Garrus said. The words seemed to explode out of him. Her eyebrows climbed, and so did the edges of her lips. God, she'd missed Garrus. And Tali. And Liara. And. . . "We spent a night together and everything was great. But she got a cold! She spent two weeks sniffling around and wearing a blanket like a cape. And she says it's fine, it's worth it. But it's not fine, Shepard."

"If she says it's okay, you kind of have to trust her," Shepard said. Garrus threw up his hands. She'd never seen him do that.

"What kind of person could relax and have fun knowing their partner is going to feel like crap in the morning?" Garrus said. "A selfish ass, that's what kind."

"I'm sorry to hear that, Garrus," Shepard said. But she couldn't stop the grin. It felt way too good to have a reason to grin.

"Sure you are." Garrus glanced around. "At least no one heard that but you. Keep it to yourself."

"Can do," Shepard said. She tried for a sketchy kind of salute but it came out more a wave. "Now, I got Liara's message."

"Oh, crap," said Garrus. "So you know."

"I know what?"

"That we haven't heard from Kaidan or his team since they transmitted the data from Omega," said Garrus. Shepard nodded. "I thought you might not know, since the first words out of your mouth weren't 'where the hell is Kaidan?'".

"I've had a few hours to stew on that," Shepard said. "Liara said you guys hadn't heard anything. Hearing you say it too wouldn't make me feel better."

"I told him to let me lead the team into Omega," Garrus said. "I told him I knew Omega better than anyone else on the ship. But he said that Palaven was going to need me."

"He was right about that," said Shepard. "But you were right about your experience. He made several bad calls here. And I'm really, really going to enjoy telling him what they were when we get him back. When we get them all back."

"All right, there's the Shepard I know!" Garrus said. "Did you wake up from your coma with a plan, or are we winging this one?"

"I need more data to form a plan," Shepard said. She was almost exactly the entire length of the galaxy away, barely able to use an omni tool, and he just believed that she could fix this. That kind of faith was humbling and encouraging as hell.

But it wasn't surprising. Garrus had her back since the beginning. So had Tali. The two of them had never been following orders or a flag, they were following her.

"Right after we took the Reapers out Omega went dark," said Garrus. "Communications were down for a few weeks. When they came back online the only people answering the comm was a group of batarian slavers. A federation, actually, of allied groups of slavers. Sometimes the mad prophet would put in an appearance. You remember him."

"Sure," said Shepard. "But Aria just took Omega back. She wouldn't let anyone disrupt her control of it now."

"That's what Kaidan said," said Garrus. "He had this theory that Aria was using the batarians somehow. He said that you'd told him about how Aria acted when you helped her take Omega back and that the woman you described would still be in control of Omega no matter what."

"If it was based on my stories it shouldn't be a surprise that I agree," Shepard said.

"I lived on Omega for years, Shepard," Garrus said, cocking out his hip. "It's not an easy place to defend. Or hold on to. Aria sent essentially every mercenary on her payroll to help you in the battle for Earth. There wouldn't have been very many people left to consolidate her power base."

"Hell, last time I saw her she was in Purgatory on the Citadel," Shepard said. "I don't even know if she made it off."

"Yeah. Sometimes things just are what they look like," Garrus said. He slumped a little, shoook his head. "If the batarians have our guys they might be keeping them as high dollar property but I doubt it. They would have offered at least one of them for sale by now. Probably Javik. The only thing that makes me think the team survived and is holed up on Omega somewhere is that if they'd killed them Javik's body would have hit the market by now. Even a dead Prothean is a unique find."

"Yeah." Shepard tried to swallow past the lump in her throat. "That's encouraging."

"It's not just Kaidan's team being lost on Omega," said Garrus. "We've got reports of rachni in the area."

"So, ask them to help you repair the mass relay," Shepard said. Garrus reeled back.

"No one's talking to them, Shepard. I haven't exactly seen any. But they aren't a chatty bunch. Liara's got most of the intel on them but it doesn't look good." Garrus shook his head. "The rachni are everywhere. There have been a few skirmishes. It looks like we might be at the start of another rachni war. And if those things start firing we're pretty vulnerable targets up here. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide."

"What are the queens saying?" Shepard asked.

"Nothing as far as I know. But you'd have to ask Liara." Garrus crossed his arms. "Would you like me to get Liara?"

"Yes, please," Shepard said. She held out her hand. It shook but she could do it. "But I do want to talk to you more later. Give me a call sometime soon, yeah? It'll be a good work. Like visiting the sick."

"I'll make sure to do that, Shepard," Garrus said. Then he was gone.

It only took a moment for Liara to appear in the vid screen. She looked wrung out, exhausted, like she hadn't slept for weeks. But she smiled to see Shepard.

"It's good to see you conscious," Liara said. "Did you get my recording?"

"Yes, I did," Shepard said. "Have you been doing one of those every day?"

"Every few days," Liara admitted, ducking her head like she was embarassed to not have done more. "That one is a couple of days old. But there haven't been any recent developments."

"Garrus filled in the gaps for me on Omega," Shepard said. Liara winced, looking down. "It wasn't your fault, Liara. At least it really doesn't sound like it could possibly have been your fault."

"A two-pronged assault was such a brutal and inelegant way to address the issue," Liara said. "If I'd had more time, more access to intel, I could have fixed this without firing a shot."

"Easy there, Shadow Broker," Shepard said. "Don't start thinking that you can fix everything with carefully leaked information or hacking. It doesn't work that way. You've got some of the best people in the galaxy out there with you. If you, Kaidan, and Garrus put together couldn't come up with a better plan then I'm sure you did the right thing. Completely sure."

"Thank you, Shepard." Liara opened her mouth like she was going to say something else but instead she shook her head and put her hand over her mouth. Holding something in.

"Garrus mentioned that there's some concern about the rachni?" Shepard asked. _If I don't change the subject I'm going to start crying. Crying right now would hurt like a motherfucker._

"There are rachni ships all over the galaxy." Liara waved her omni tool and pulled up a small map schematic. It looked like a chart of sightings in different star systems. "There have been some reports of minor skirmishes. Some people beleive the rachni are simply drifting in salvaged ships. Some beleive they are placing themselves for a co-ordinated strike. All we know for sure is that there are a lot of them."

"What have the queens said about the rachni presence?" Shepard asked. Liara shrugged and shook her head.

"No one has communicated with any of the rachni queens since we completed the Crucible. No one can even locate them," Liara said.

"That's the key. Get me access to one of the queens. I don't care how you do it. I need to be able to talk to them." Shepard felt like jumping up and pacing. Or howling with frustration. "They owe me. Damnit, I couldn't have been this wrong about them."

"They're very different from most of the species in the galaxy," Liara said. "There's no shame in not being able to predict their actions."

"If there's another war, it will be my fault," Shepard said. "So get me one of the rachni queens."

"Of course, Shepard," Liara said. She paused. Bit her lip. "Do you. . . Kaidan left me a message to pass along to you. But it's a goodbye message. Do you want me to send it to you?"

"I haven't even tried yet." Shepard closed her eyes. She wanted to think through the problem of Omega logically, but she just kept seeing Kaidan's face.

And that was a hell of a kick to the teeth, because he wasn't the only one of her people that was as stake here. No wonder the rules against fraternization were so strict. She loved Vega like he was her kid brother, and Javik . . . Javik was an excellent soldier and a true asset to the Alliance. But if it came down to it she'd let them both rot to save Kaidan. Even if he hated her for it.

She should never have let this go so far. She'd thought maybe they'd have a fling. Or maybe it would last for a few years, but it wouldn't get too serious. She hadn't known it was even possible for her judgment to be compromised so severely. Hadn't known that another person could get so deep under her skin.

Too late now, though. She'd tried to give less of a damn about him after Horizon. It really, _really_ hadn't worked.

"Let's try to contact Omega together," Shepard said. "If Aria made it off the Citadel and back to Omega she might have a special voice screen for me. She's found our association to be very useful in the past."

"No harm in trying," Liara said. She typed something into her omni tool and waved it over the comm console. The screen split. Now there was a field of static to the left of Liara. It resolved itself into the face of a batarian wearing civvies.

"Dr. T'Soni," said the batarian. He sounded extremely annoyed. "I thought I made it clear that we don't know anything about your little friends."

"I'm not the one asking this time," Liara said. Shepard wished fervently that she was standing, or at least sitting, and wearing real clothes. Or armor. Or something more authoritative than a damn robe.

"I'm Commander Shepard." She said it as firmly as possible. Which wasn't very. "I would like to speak with whoever is in charge."

"Commander Shepard is as tall as an Atlas and breathes fire," said the batarian. "You look more like you caught fire."

"I did," Shepard said. "I caught fire when I ignited the blast that took down the goddamn Reapers. Now get me someone who has the authority to actually negotiate with me. I don't need to speak to a secretary."

The screen fuzzed out.

"Did he go to get someone, or hang up?" Liara asked. Shepard sighed.

"We're just going to have to wait and find out," she said. Liara waited a few heartbeats in silence.

"You know, if the scars start to bother you, I'm sure that Miranda has something for them. They look much better now than they did a few months ago," Liara said. Shepard tried not to flinch.

"Yeah, thanks."

The silence turned awkward. Hell, she didn't even know what she looked like.

Eventually the fuzz resolved itself into an image of an asari in club wear. She looked kind of pissed. Nothing new there. Shepard felt a grin beginning on her lips.

"Aria. I knew you couldn't really be dead," she said. Aria inclined her head.

"Right back at you, Shepard. But you look like shit." Aria spread her arms wide. Taking psychological control of the space. "What do you want?"

"I think three members of my crew are somewhere on Omega. I want them back," Shepard said. No point in gushing or beating around the bush. Aria was never much of one for pleasantries.

"Yes. I've got them in cryo stasis," said Aria. "Two Alliance marines and a water bug in red armor. Your little Alliance Major said you were on the mend. I figured you would want them back."

"All right, Aria." She'd worked with the Queen of Omega enough times in the past to know what was coming. "What is it you want?"

"I want a lot of things, Shepard." Aria glanced around. Like this was just one of several dozen meetings she had for today. "I barely made it off the Citadel before the Reapers arrived. When I got back to my station a federation of batarian slavers was trying to move in."

"So there really is a federation of batarian slavers?" Liara asked. Aria shot her a look of dislike.

"We managed to come to an arrangement," Aria said. "They're handling a lot of the commerce that comes through while I beef up Omega's defenses. I have to make sure that the people of Omega have some security before I announce my little partnership to the galaxy."

That was a change. Aria never cared about the citizens of Omega before she and Shepard ousted Cerberus from the station. Maybe she really had changed. The death of Nyreen, her old lover and a staunch advocate for Omega's citizens, probably had a lot to do with that.

"I'm surprised you're sharing power, Aria," Shepard said. Then it hit her. Aria hated even the idea of sharing Omega, or Omega's resources. She would want to kick the batarians off her station as soon as possible. But Aria had to be undermanned now. She'd sent practically every mercenary she knew into the fight for Earth. The survivors were still in the Sol system. Trapped until the mass relays were fixed.

Aria might be afraid that the batarians were listening to her conversation. Or else she would just come out and say what she wanted.

"Let's talk prisoner exchange," said Shepard. "A lot of your people were trapped here in the Sol system when the mass relays broke. If I can get your people home to you, will you give my people back to me?"

With those troops Aria could retake Omega. Their eyes met, and Aria nodded. That was what she wanted. That was the deal she wanted to make.

"If you can pull that off, Shepard, that would be a small miracle," Aria said. "I'll just hold on to your lost lambs until you can offer me something I want."

Then, in her best I-am-in-control style, Aria cut the comm.

"I can't believe Kaidan was right. Garrus will throw a fit. Did I read that right? Did you just make a deal to get them home?" Liara closed her eyes and buried her face in her hands. "I've been banging my head against the wall for two weeks, and you just fix it with one comm call. I'm starting to wonder if you're supernatural."

"Yeah, well. Aren't you about two years away from getting the mass relays fixed?" Shepard asked. Liara frowned. Neither of them had to say it out loud.

A lot could happen in two years. Especially on Omega. There was no guarantee that even cryo stasis could protect their team from the changing fortunes on that outlaw station.

"Do you think she was telling the truth, at least?" Liara folded her arms, her hand worrying at the edge of her mouth. "About having them in cryo stasis."

"She was telling the truth about that," Shepard said. "Aria knows that if she screws with me and my crew suffers for it, I'll blow Omega to tiny pieces."

"I can't even begin to imagine how you would do that," Liara said. "But I'm glad she is aware of the consequences. That provides a limited guarantee. Javik will be livid."

" _I'm_ livid," Shepard whispered. _It just doesn't show because I'm stuck in a hospital bed. Being useless._


	9. No Matter What Happens

I do not own Mass Effect or any of its characters or settings. Thank you for reading!

* * *

 _She'd definitely had too much to drink. She felt like she'd been full-contact sparring with Wrex. Naked. But she was warm, wrapped up in Kaidan's arms. She shifted and he woke with her._

" _Good morning," he said with that little smile he always had when they woke up like this. She couldn't help but smile back. He leaned in to kiss her. His hand traced a slow and gentle path down her side to her hip._

" _Morning," she said. "Think we have time for a leisurely start?"_

 _He chuckled. Then he flew backwards across the room, slamming into the floor by the door. Aria T'Loak strode through the opening, her face a study in rage. She flung out a hand and her biotic lash picked Kaidan up again before he could get to his feet. One more hit like that would kill him._

Shepard woke with a start, her heart pounding. She was never going to heal if these nightmares didn't stop.

The world outside her window was barely light. How did people live with all this time to sleep and stare and contemplate? Aside from her shore leave on the Citadel, she'd been going non-stop for years. She'd never spent this much time just lying around.

And it was still going to be two weeks before she could even start her physical therapy.

And then what?

Maybe it wasn't too late to take Jack up on that offer to teach her how to be a pirate.

She had to do something. Watch a vid? Read a book? She didn't have either.

She could call someone. There were plenty of people in the galaxy that she wanted desperately to talk to. But only one she was pretty sure would be awake.

She punched in the comm code for the Normandy, and then the secondary code to send a special ping to the cockpit. If she knew Joker he would be sitting in his pilot seat and staring out at space. He always said his pain medication kept him awake. She thought it was more forgetting to take the meds that kept sleep at bay, but it was his pain to manage. She had her own now.

It took a while for him to come to the comm. But then, he really couldn't move very fast.

"Shepard," he said as he limped into the vid pick up. "I heard you woke up yesterday. I was going to call."

"You were?" That was a pleasant surprise. Kaidan said he was in a bad state. She was worried he might be upset that she'd made the call that killed Edi. If their situations were reversed she'd damn well be upset.

"Yeah, well. It's boring out here. And before he died Anderson told me to take care of you." Joker shrugged. "So. You know."

"I thought I'd be the last person you wanted to talk with," Shepard said. She should leave it alone. Not look a gift horse in the mouth. But she just couldn't leave it unsaid. "Because of Edi."

"Shit, Shepard." Joker pulled off his cap and ran his hand over his head. She'd never seen him do that. She wasn't sure he even had hair under that thing. "If Edi had been standing right next to you when you made that call she would have told you to do it. She told me about how she'd altered her self-preservation parameters or whatever. And she told me why. I'm pissed, yeah. And I won't pretend that it doesn't still hurt like a son of a bitch. But she would have wanted us both to carry on."

"She really would have," Shepard said. "Kaidan seemed convinced you were in a super depressed state."

"No, I just didn't want to talk to _him_ ," Joker said. "Dude's a fucking hypocrite. I would have thought he'd be the most understanding. I mean, you were dead for a while. He ought to know what this is like from my perspective. But he's all platitudes and awkward encouragement."

"Maybe that's what he wanted when I was dead," Shepard said. Joker snorted in derision.

"I don't know what you have to do to go from being a Lieutenant to a Major inside of three years but it doesn't involve 'getting to be at peace with what happened.'" Joker gestured quotation marks around that phrase and said it in a dippy tone. Shepard flinched.

"Ouch."

"Yeah. I mean, I'm not about to go headbutt a krogan warlord or whatever he did to deal with you being dead. I'd get splintered. But hearing him talk like that just pisses me off."

"I get that," Shepard said. She felt lighter, happier, just knowing that Joker wasn't irrevocably pissed at her. "How's it been since I went down?"

"Quiet, boring, and yet somehow incredibly dangerous," Joker said. "Did I already say quiet? Because it's way too quiet."

 _Probably because you got used to Edi being around and now that cockpit is just you and empty space._

"Think of it as a vacation," Shepard suggested. "Down time."

"We've had more than enough down time," Joker said. "I miss really flying. Are you thinking of your hospital stay as a vacation?"

"You make a solid point," Shepard said. "This is maddening."

"Yeah, and you just now started being awake for it," Joker said. He shrugged. "Maybe we're adrenaline junkies."

"I've known that for years. You're. . ." Shepard stopped. She'd heard something in the hall. A quiet footfall. She tried to turn her head to look but she just couldn't see that far. The lines of sight were terrible. If Zaeed ever came to visit her he'd definitely put in some booby traps. Maybe another exploding glass wall. She'd never thought that would be something she'd want.

"Whoever is there, you should just come in and say hi," Shepard said. What was she going to do, shoot them? Not today.

Feron, the drell who Liara had rescued from the old Shadow Broker and then made her second in command when she took over operations, stepped into her room. He had a data pad.

"I was going to wait until you were certainly up," Feron said, "but then I heard voices. My courier ship got here three hours early, and there is nowhere else for me to go. I was downloading hospital logs. But I would rather just be talking to you."

"How did you even get to Earth?" Shepard asked. Joker, still standing in the vid pick-up, crossed his arms and waited.

"I was at the Mars Archives when the battle for Earth began," said Feron. He stopped an arm's length away from her bed. Probably so she wouldn't feel crowded. Feron had wonderful manners. "Dr. T'Soni wanted me to triple-check to make sure there wasn't more information about what the Crucible really did. Since then I've been working mostly on the rachni problem."

"Oh, thank goodness," Shepard said. "Are you here to tell me you have a way to contact one of the queens?"

"Talking to the spiders always went soooooo well in the past," Joker muttered. Shepard ignored him, but the corner of her mouth ticked up. She felt more like her old self already.

"Something like that," Feron said. "I have worked very closely with Dr. Ann Bryson. Over comm link, of course. She wrote her dissertation on the rachni. We came up with a plan to contact the rachni queens six days ago. But Dr. T'Soni forbid me to implement it."

"You know that Shepard doesn't actually outrank your boss, right?" Joker said. "You're still going to get in trouble for this."

"I'm here for advice, actually," Feron said, glowering at Joker's image on the screen. "My priority is keeping Dr. T'Soni from being blown up by a rachni ship out there by that mass relay. Not keeping my job."

"If Liara said it was a bad idea she's probably right," Shepard said. "She's usually right."

"That's not. . ." Feron closed his eyes. Took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. "She thinks it's unethical. But if you say it's the best option she'll trust your judgment. She doesn't know I'm asking you about this."

"Okay, Feron." He wanted her to make the tough call. Nothing new there. She'd fought long and hard to be the person who got to make the tough calls so she could make sure people made the right ones. "What is this plan?"

"The rachni cannot speak to us directly. Our methods of communication are too different," Feron said. "They need a receptive mind. An asari, or a krogan, or a drell. They can only speak to us through another species. As like a translator. But it looks like the translating person is completely taken over. Controlled. And for whatever reason the rachni seem to speak most often through the dead or the dying."

"I've seen that. But they can also speak through healthy people," Shepard said.

"Right." Feron nodded. "Dr. Bryson and I have found six systems where there may be a rachni queen. They tend to live underground so we can't be absolutely sure. In three of those systems I may be able to scramble a contact team. Our best shot - again, we went around and around on this - is to send in someone who can communicate with the rachni. An asari who is mentally ill, or a drell who is disconnected from the world."

Joker whistled. Feron paused and looked at him.

"Nothing, just, damn. No wonder Liara didn't like this plan." Joker shifted his weight. Standing this long had to be killing his legs. "That's a great way to get a defenseless crazy person killed."

"I have to agree," Shepard said. "What did you come up with for their safety?"

"We reasoned that no force of arms would be big enough to actually break through a rachni stronghold," Feron said. That sounded right. "So we thought a small team. Just the translator, a communications specialist, and a biotic soldier equipped with tools for a quick evacuation. If it doesn't work the best chance the team has is to escape quickly."

"You're not really considering this, Commander," Joker said.

What did she know about the rachni? She'd met two of their queens. They seemed like a pretty peaceful and noble species when you gave them a chance. Liara had said that it wasn't clear who had started those skirmishes. But the rachni had once been the biggest threat to the galaxy.

She was right to take a gamble on the krogan. And the geth. It still hurt to think about the geth. To think about Legion dying for nothing, his people killed by her hand when she struck that blow against the Reapers.

She had thought, when they were helping build the Crucible, that she was right to take a gamble on the rachni too.

If she sent mentally ill people to talk to the rachni nine people might die. Nine brave, good people. If she did nothing and these skirmishes continued then another rachni war might start. Or, hell, how many people would die in the skirmishes? What did Garrus call it? The brutal calculus of war. Except they weren't at war anymore. So should she really be thinking in terms of who to sacrifice?

No. She'd fallen prey to the arguments of fear once before. At Torfan the argument was that if they didn't wipe out the slaver base they'd be hit with another Skyllian Blitz. She'd sacrificed her team, her friends, to make sure that never happened. When the dust settled into rubble she realized she was wrong. She should have found another way.

If she could have found another way to destroy the Reapers, she would have. And even now she wasn't sure she'd made the right choice. Could they really have synthesized peacefully, organics and synthetics? Could she really have controlled the Reapers? Or was her way the only way to actually end the war?

"Let's hold your option in reserve, Feron," Shepard said. "It's a very clever idea. I'm just not prepared to sacrifice people. The rachni might still try to contact us."

"If you say so, Commander," Feron said. He hung his head. "If both you and Dr. T'Soni are against this path then it must be the wrong one."

"You had to know that wasn't going to fly," Joker said. Feron sighed.

"Thanks for coming to see me, Feron," Shepard said before Joker could get any more shots in. "Is there anything else I should know about?"

"Well, according to the hospital logs there are two people who visit you every few days." Feron pulled up his data pad. "A Steven Cortez and an Elizabeth Alenko. Mrs. Alenko has been bringing apples to the hospital staff. Now that you are awake they may become permanent fixtures. If you do not wish to see them you might want to alert hospital security."

"I think that's. . . Kaidan's mom?" Shepard frowned. She'd never met his mother. Never even seen a picture. "Why is she bringing people apples?"

"A better question is are you ready to meet the in-laws?" Joker asked. He was grinning. It was good to see him grin. But no, no she was not ready. She'd never imagined meeting Kaidan's mother. Maybe she should have. But it just hadn't ever occurred to her.

"You might want a real shirt for that meet, Commander," Joker continued with a kind of unholy glee. "Maybe you'll get lucky and she won't want to know when the wedding is. Do you think she'll have embarrassing baby photos? If she does, sent 'em to me. I could use the blackmail material."

"Can it, Flight Lieutenant," Shepard said. _Did Kaidan even tell his mother about us? Why didn't I ever ask him about that?_

"I should get back to my work," Feron said. He didn't look too amused by Joker. "Unless there's something else I can do for you."

"Yeah." With great effort she wrenched her thoughts back to the real issue. Rachni. "Co-ordinate with Dr. Bryson and collate reports of vulnerable and mentally ill people, particularly soldiers and travelers, who have tried to tell someone something about the rachni. If the rachni queens were reaching out before it's entirely possible that high command missed it. They don't pay much attention to folks who call them up and talk about singing colors with the spider folk."

"I will do that." Feron gave her a nod that bordered on a salute and took his leave.

"That guy is way too serious," Joker said. "Just like Liara. Think those two crazy kids ever got together back on the Shadow Broker ship? Imagine how somber that date would be."

"Not everyone is as good a time as you are, Joker," she said. That won her a laugh.

"All right, now I do want to talk to Kaidan. So I can tell him you said _that_. That guy is underfoot for months and then when I want to see him he's a meat-cicle. Typical."

"Did you ever track down your sister or father?" Shepard asked. Joker's good humor crumpled.

"No, but thanks for bringing it up. No news is. . . is bad news. Hey, Commander?" Joker rubbed his eyes with his hand. "I stand here much longer and my legs are gonna snap. Or at least feel like they have. I'll talk to you later."

"Yeah, later," Shepard said. _I am such an asshole._ "I'm sorry, Joker."

"Sure," he said, and cut the comm.

After a moment's consideration she keyed the comm unit to bring up galactic news feeds. The galaxy seemed to be moving right along. Plenty of arguments about where to send resources. That wasn't a surprise. Several mass relays were getting repaired. Most of them were a little more than a year away from completion. That wasn't very long. It just felt like forever because she wanted to get her people home _now_.

The real surprise was how much of the news focused on her. Her face stared back at her from the screen in several; dozen different programs. People were discussing her past, her fight against the Reapers, where she was now. Some of it sounded borderline religious. That was super weird.

She was halfway through an extremely romanticized account of her childhood on Earth- re-enacted by a young girl who didn't look much like her - when she heard a knock at the door. Cortez was standing in the frame. He was grinning at her. And right behind him in the doorway stood a short, chubby woman whose black hair was held back from her face in an elaborate bun. She wore civvies, and she was carrying a basket of apples.

 _Even money says that's Kaidan's mom._

She was so not ready for this.

But she smiled and beckoned them both in.

"It's good to see you awake, Shepard," Cortez said. "This is Elizabeth Alenko. The Major's mother."

"It's nice to meet you," Shepard told her. The older woman smiled a little anxiously and set her apples down on the edge of Shepard's bed.

"It's nice to meet you, too," Elizabeth said. "I'd like to say I've heard all about you, but my son isn't the most communicative."

"Really?" She'd sort of pictured him being the type that wrote home every week. But maybe the reason he hadn't talked a lot about his family was that they just weren't that close.

Or maybe he hadn't wanted to say much when they first got together, because he thought they'd be touchy about their boy breaking fraternization regulations. They were a military family. And then she was dead. Then she was with Cerberus. Then. . . by the time they reconnected his father was MIA and his mother was on Earth during the Reaper invasion. Not a lot of time to chat.

But surely he could have brought her up to speed while they were traveling to the Omega system.

"When's the last time you heard from him?" Shepard asked. She glanced at Cortez but his smiling face wasn't giving her any clues.

"About a month ago," Elizabeth said. "He told me all about their plan to go to Omega. And he asked me to take care of you if anything happened to him."

"He asked you to what?" What could he possibly expect this pleasant, plump, middle-aged Navy widow to do for her?

"I think he was trying to give me some direction. He knows that it's been hard since his father went MIA," Elizabeth said. "And he was terribly worried for you. I take it. . . I haven't heard anything from him. Have you? I think you would hear before I would."

"He's still on Omega," Shepard said. She was relieved to have some not-as-bad-as-it-could-be news to offer. "One of the major players on that station had him and his whole team cryogenically frozen. They're being held in reserve as a bargaining chip."

Elizabeth blew out her breath and closed her eyes. Maybe in relief. Or at least in less fear. "That's something at least."

"I would never bet against the crew of the Normandy," Cortez said. "Not in any situation."

"That's a good point," Elizabeth said. She gave Shepard a speculative look. "What he did say about you was that he'd fallen in love with you. And that was why he behaved so, so recklessly after your death. But he wouldn't ever really tell me what happened with the two of you."

 _Well, we spent a lot of great nights together._

No.

 _I'm really tired, could we talk about this later?_

That would just postpone the inevitable.

"We never talked much about what to call what we were." Shepard said. She'd never had to meet a lover's parents before. And she'd certainly never had to explain her actions to any kind of motherly figure. "But we were close. And given the chance I'd like to be close again."

"You guys got together on the first Normandy, right?" asked Cortez. She fought not to glare at him. He obviously didn't realize how little he was helping right now. The man was married, he'd had actual in-laws. He probably thought this was a bonding experience or something.

Elizabeth smiled and perched on one of the stools near Shepard's bed. They were settling in. Awesome.

Well, she'd wished for something to do to take her mind off things. She should have been more specific.

"Tell me the story," Elizabeth said. "Kaidan never really talked about any women, not even when he was young. Or any men. I was worried he was shutting himself off from that part of life. And I think we could all use a good romantic story right about now. All I hear about is wrecked places and people not getting the things they need."

"Ain't that the truth," Cortez agreed. He leaned against the nearest wall.

Well, why not? She could leave out all the less-dressed parts. It wasn't like she had anything better to do.

"We met the day the Normandy SR-1 left dry dock for her shakedown cruise," she said. "All the officers had to gather in the bridge to listen to Anderson's big speech. He was a legend, even then. And right beside Anderson there was this Spectre, Nihlus. . ."


	10. I Will Always Come Home to You

I do not own Mass Effect or any of its characters or settings. Thank you for reading!

* * *

After five weeks of wearing nothing more restrictive than her bathing suit for physical therapy, the dress uniform chafed. Was the collar always this uncomfortable?

She'd spent the day giving interviews and recording little vid clips. Admiral Hackett asked her to use some of her fame to boost morale and convince people to keep going. If standing in front of a camera was going to help people, she'd do it. It just seemed ridiculous.

"I'm Commander Shepard," _and this is my favorite store on the Citadel._ "And I don't deserve any more praise than any other soldier of any species. But there are people who will listen to me. So I'm going to use that to say that this is still a time when we need to band together. Everyone lost a lot in the war against the Reapers. We all lost people we love, and everyone's home is damaged now. We need water and food and medical supplies. We need engineers, we need salvage teams, we need construction workers. We need nurturers for our children. There is something that every one of us can do to help the people around us. If we wait for the problems to be fixed by someone else, or if we try to use this as an opportunity to get rich, everyone suffers."

The important thing, according to Diana Allers, was to give the camera plenty of eye contact. Make people feel like you're talking directly to them.

"You banded together to fight for the chance to survive," she said. "And for many of us that fight is not over. Every life is important. Take care of each other."

She nodded, paused a moment so that they didn't have to edit too close to the end of her speech, then sat down. It was still hard to stand up for more than a few minutes at a time. She hated it. But it was getting better.

Past the camera and the small team of videographers that came with it a drell was leaning against the wall. Feron caught her eye and smiled. Then he started towards her.

"I didn't want to interrupt," he said. "You were very authoritative."

"Thanks." Could this be a social visit? She didn't think Feron did social visits. "What's up?"

"I may have found a way to communicate with your friend from Noveria," Feron said. "Would you care to come with me?"

Shepard glanced around. He had to be talking about the rachni. She didn't want to discuss deep-space boogeymen in front of all these cameras.

"Sure. Let's go back to my room," she said. She caught the eye of one of the videographers and waved him over. "I'm taking a break to talk to my friend, here. We might be a little while."

"Whatever you need, Commander Shepard,"he said. With more effort than was pretty, she stood up. The videographer made a motion like he wanted to help her. But Feron stood still. He knew better. She took one shaky step, then another. Once she got some momentum going it wasn't so bad. Her room was just a few doors down the hall. She made it, but the effort was draining.

She maybe should have saved that energy for the talk ahead. But damnit, if she could walk she was going to. No one who had ever dealt with convalescing Marines was surprised to see her push herself too far. That didn't mean they approved.

She'd set a proper high-backed chair up in front of her comm unit and had her room rearranged so that the bed wasn't visible from the vid pick-up. It was embarrassing enough to have to talk to people from the hospital without feeling like the world could see into her bedroom. She sat down. Feron perched on her visitor's stool.

"I've been working with Dr. Bryson on cataloging those vid calls you asked me to look out for," Feron said.

"Yes, Liara's been keeping me updated." Liara hadn't said much about Feron's attempt to go over her head, so to speak. She'd just quietly thanked Shepard for backing her up on the ethics issue. Would it be rude to ask if Feron got in trouble?

"Well, we found something. It was someone asking for you, actually," Feron said. "She was trying to hail the Citadel. Of course, there's no one to answer there. It took us a while to even find these records. But she left a lot of messages for you."

"What makes you think she's with the rachni?" Shepard asked. Feron punched a code into his omni-tool. The vid screen came up. The asari in the vid message was wearing the black combat armor of a commando. She had several healing cuts on her face. Her eyes were rolled all the way back, showing only white. Just like the asari on Illium who had passed her that message from the rachni.

"We seek Commander Shepard," said the asari. Shepard's heart beat faster. That deep, rolling voice was very familiar. It was how people spoke when the rachni were controlling them. "We sang a bargain on Noveria. Our song was pure, but now there is great need. We must break our word."

The message cut off. That. . . didn't sound encouraging.

"I need to talk to that asari," Shepard said. Feron smiled.

"I thought you might. I can connect to the comm unit she was using right from here. We traced it to a ship drifting in the Maskim Xul system," Feron said. "Are you sure you're ready to talk to them?"

"I'm always ready," Shepard said. If people would stop wasting time treating her with kid gloves she might actually get something done. Feron tilted his head in acknowledgment, but not necessarily agreement, and connected the vid call.

It didn't take very long to get an answer. The same asari appeared in the holo screen. But this time, her eyes were completely normal. They were a deep green.

"Commander Shepard," the asari said. She looked confused. "When you didn't answer for so long I was afraid you might be dead. The news reports were. . . conflicting."

"I'm sorry, your messages were going to the Citadel," Shepard said. "Who are you?"

"Janilla T'Foran," the asari said. "I used to be a commando. But now. . . now I'm helping the rachni. And they're helping me."

"You're not under any duress or in any trouble?" Shepard asked. She could believe that a lost soul might want to commune with the rachni. But watching the translator speak words that weren't theirs always bothered her.

"Not the kind you mean, Commander." Janilla smiled a bitter smile. "I'm quite willing to help the rachni speak."

"May I speak with the rachni queen now?" Shepard asked. Janilla nodded, and stepped back from the comm unit. She closed her eyes. Then she reached her hands out and threw her head back. Did she have some telepathic way of contacting the queen? Shepard never was very clear on how this worked. Dr. Bryson might know.

When Janilla opened her eyes again they were white.

"Hello," Shepard said. Janilla tilted her head.

"Long has it been since we heard your song," the rachni queen said through Janilla's lips. "We feared you were silent forever."

"I was very badly hurt. I only just received your messages," Shepard said. "What happened to the rachni? I thought that after you helped with the Crucible you could live in peace with the rest of the galactic community."

"So did we," said the rachni queen. "But where my children go, fire follows. They are killed. On our homeworld we are killed. In space we are killed. We have no safe place to sing the dark. I must make a safe place for my children."

"Who is attacking you?" Shepard asked. Liara had mentioned skirmishes. But she'd never thought to ask what happened on the rachni homeworld. It was a toxic world. It wasn't exactly heavily populated. Why not give it back to the rachni?

Obviously being comatose for several months made her wits slow. She should have thought of this.

"Many ships. Asari. Krogan. Salarian. Human." The rachni queen's echoing voice seemed sad. But it was hard to tell. Janilla's face was perfectly blank. But then, she was just a translator. "We fear you are the only one willing to listen for us."

"People are afraid of you." There had to be some way to fix this. She could not be responsible for another rachni war. The rachni wanted to be peaceful. She could swear that much was true. "The only thing most people know about the rachni is that they were a threat thousands of years ago. Trust has to be earned. It can be earned best by working together, communicating."

"We tried to help rebuild the mass relays," the rachni queen said. "Our ships were turned into floating cinders. My children were killed. Our help is not wanted."

"They didn't know what you were trying to do," Shepard said. She had to rein this back in. "I'm sorry for the loss of your children. You've suffered more than most. Lost more than most."

"We do not mourn. We starve," said the rachni queen. "We need our planet. We need places to expand."

Krogan expansion was bad enough. But rachni expansion would probably tip the cart right over.

No. There had to be room for everyone. Or else the Reapers were right, and they needed to be culled for the good of all life in the Universe.

"If the people repairing the mass relays had known you were there to help they would not have fired on your ships," Shepard said. _Or so I fervently hope._ "You're speaking through Janilla now. If I send you more translators could you speak through them and talk to the groups that are repairing the mass relays? If you explain what your children are doing they'll let you help. They'll want you to help."

Feron's eyes were huge, his eyebrows raised in shock. She spared him a quelling glance. _I know what I'm doing. I hope._ This couldn't be a bigger gamble than the one she took with the geth. Could it?

"We would sing to them if we could," the rachni queen said. "But you want us to repay their fire with assistance."

"I want you to find your place in the galactic community," Shepard said. "I want people to know you're trustworthy so that they will live beside your children in peace."

"Do you think that's possible?" asked the rachni queen. Shepard took a deep breath. If she was wrong, it could be war. But if she didn't try it would be war anyway. And the best case scenario would leave millions of rachni dead, and not a few other people with them.

"I know it can happen," Shepard said with a lot more confidence than she actually felt. "If you help repair the mass relays I can get you your home world back."

Feron closed his eyes as if in deep pain. Fortunately he wasn't visible in the vid pick-up.

"If you truly believe that is so, it may be so," the rachni queen said. "Send me your translators. We will sing to the galactic leaders. And we will see what happens."

"Where can I send them?" Shepard asked. "Are there other queens? We may not be able to get many people who are already in your star system."

"This one will send you coordinates for two other queens," said the rachni queen. She must be referring to Janilla. "We all sing together."

"Thank you," Shepard said. "I won't let you down."

The rachni queen regarded her in silence for a moment. Then she cut the comm. Shepard blew out her breath in a huff.

"Are you out of your mind?" asked Feron. Shepard frowned at him.

"What, you don't think I can do it?" The comm console pinged. She used her omni tool to open up the message. It was the promised coordinates. There had to be something she could do with one of these sites. She sent the information on to Liara and Feron. She was sure Liara would be calling herself very soon. Probably with the same question Feron had just asked. For some reason it would be less offensive coming from her.

"I think that the council races are going to object very strongly," said Feron. Shepard shrugged.

"They usually do. See what kind of communication team you can get to those three coordinates. The two I just sent you, and the queen we just spoke to. Now that we have a way to warn the rachni, make sure they don't hurt any of those people, we may be able to use the folks you wanted to use before. But this is volunteer only," Shepard said.

"What if the rachni kill the translators? Or sabotage the mass relays? Or start attacking ships?" Feron asked. Shepard took a deep breath, for patience, and to steady herself.

"Then there will be war. Again. But at least we'll know we did everything we could to stop it," she said. "Now get me a nurse who can give me some kind of stimulant and get on scrambling those communication teams. We've got a lot of work to do."

She should probably start with Admiral Hackett. He was usually fairly receptive to her ideas. He could help her convince everyone else. If they helped rebuild the mass relays the rachni would have earned their own planet back. And maybe a few others, besides. The rachni could only use toxic worlds. How hard could it be to persuade the council to let some of those go? _They never give resources lightly._

She had to try. She was the Hero of Earth. Or at least that was what they said in the vids. It had to be good for something.

* * *

Kaidan wasn't sure if it was hot or cold, but it burned every nerve ending in his body. The pain washed over him and receded as quickly as a wave lapping on the beach. _I want to go home._

His biotics were almost out of control. Almost, almost. . . he couldn't lose control. He could kill someone. He couldn't even see, the world was just static. Nothing but white noise.

Someone was holding him up. There was a yank, and a ripping noise, and the bindings on his arms and chest came loose. Then his hands were released and the person holding him let him fall to his knees. It hurt more than it should have. Like falling on ice with bare skin.

His eyes were clearing up. Everything was kind of gray, but he could almost make out the outlines of his hands against the floor. His biotics crackled along his skin. Had to take deep breaths. Had to get it under control. He could be anywhere, surrounded by anyone.

 _Aria T'Loak froze me. How much time have I lost? A month? A year? A century?_

"As promised," a familiar voice drawled. "Get them off my station."

"You might have the decency to wait until they're both on their feet." That was Liara's voice! "We barely have Javik secured."

"I'm not a decent person." The other voice must be Aria. His control slipped, and his biotics crackled over his skin again. What he wouldn't give to let loose with a full biotic kick right to her throat. . . but he had no idea what the tactical situation was. He couldn't kill her. At the moment.

Aria and Liara were both asari, and they measured their lifespans in centuries. The two of them arguing over him didn't give him any clues as to how long he'd been frozen.

"Can you stand up, Major?" That was Vega's voice. He didn't sound so good himself. But it was a good question. His vision was a little blurry, still, but those were definitely his hands. And that floor looked about as brown and scarred as the parts of Omega he remembered. So maybe he was all right.

He pulled his arms back so that the center of his weight was over his feet, and stood up. He could do it, but he was glad it didn't look like they were going to have to fight their way out. Aria was standing on the left of him, with her soldiers. Liara was standing on the right with James, and Garrus, and Tali. Where the hell was Javik?

"Let's go," Liara said. She was looking at Aria, but she must have been talking to him. He started walking. Liara led the way out. Garrus brought up the rear, looking back at Aria. Maybe he wanted to see her dead as badly as Kaidan did.

"What the hell happened?" Kaidan whispered to Vega. James just shook his head.

"I been defrosted maybe five minutes longer than you," Vega said. They arrived at an airlock. The batarian soldier there watched them approach in silence and never challenged their right to leave. That was probably a good sign.

The airlock opened into the Normandy. He'd never been so glad to see a ship. He waited until the doors closed behind them all to round on Liara.

"Where the hell is Javik?" he asked. She held up her hand, forestalling him.

"I had Javik's cryogenic stasis pod taken to the shuttle bay without opening it. These pods aren't exactly top of the line. Given his unique physiology I wanted to thaw him out in more controlled conditions," Liara said.

"Aria could have stood to be more gracious about the exchange," Garrus said. "Not that I'm surprised at how that went."

"I think I'll have that woman's little empire destroyed," Liara said. She didn't even sound angry, just thoughtful. "But not today."

"How the hell did you get us out of there?" Vega asked. Which was a good question, but Kaidan had a more important one.

"Is Shepard all right?" he said. Liara smiled at him at last, shaken out of her quiet plotting to have Aria deposed.

"She's walking, talking, and negotiating galactic treaties. She had a lot more to do with your release than I did," Liara said. "Aria was sharing Omega station with that federation of batarian slavers. Neither party had enough man power to take over. Shepard got Aria's mercenaries home to her in exchange for the three of you. When Aria solidified her power base she called us to come get you."

"How did Shepard manage to get those mercenaries from Earth to here?" Kaidan said. Surely they would need the mass relays. They'd estimated it would be at least two years to repair the relay at Omega. _Did I lose two years?_

"She talked the rachni into helping rebuild the mass relay system in exchange for their homeworld and a couple of other toxic planets," Garrus said. Tali sighed and shook her head.

"Giant spiders everywhere. Everywhere you go," Tali said.

"Helpful engineer spiders," Liara added. "Several main lines of transit are already fixed. Much faster than we anticipated."

"How much faster?" Kaidan asked. He shared a look with James. Two years was a long time to be out of the world. A lot could happen. Friends and lovers could move on. Family could die. Was this how Shepard felt when she woke up in that Cerberus lab?

"You've been frozen about four months," Garrus said. "Call it a perk of being Shepard's partner. Lots of people say they'd move heaven and earth to see a lover again, but she's actually capable of doing it."

"Always knew Lola was sweet on me," Vega teased. Kaidan rolled his eyes.

"If the mass relays are fixed, does that mean we can get to Earth?" Kaidan asked. He glanced around "And, ah, Palaven and Rannoch and Thessia?"

"We're headed to Earth right now, actually," Liara said. "With a brief stop at Jump Zero. Shepard's meeting us there."

 _Shepard's meeting us there._

"I think we have about an hour before we get to the relay," Tali said. "So if you fellows want to shower before we get to Jump Zero you have time."

"What, you think I stink?" Vega asked. Kaidan tapped the back of the other man's armor.

"Even Marines have to wash up sometime," Kaidan said. "Let's go."

 _Home. Home, home home._

 _Shepard's meeting us there._

* * *

"It's so strange to think that my son grew up here," said Elizabeth Alenko. They were both seated in the main transit hub of Jump Zero, on a dais on a stage near the docks where the Normandy was expected. The arrival of the Normandy from the Omega system had become a media circus. Shepard was back in her dress uniform. She hadn't worn combat armor in months but she could swear it was more comfortable.

"Why is that?" she asked, with a small smile. There were three vid cameras pointed at them. But no microphones. That she knew of. She hated this.

But she wouldn't miss her crew docking for anything. _They're almost here._

"I've never even seen this place," Elizabeth said. "It's so cold."

It wasn't temperature the older woman was referring to, Shepard realized. Jump Zero was an early space station. It was built along very utilitarian lines. Early space installations always looked very Spartan. Even more so than the poorest modern colony. People just believed in the positive effects of a peaceful decor, now. They didn't use to bother.

"Whatever this place was for Kaidan, he couldn't be the man he is today without it," Shepard said. "So if you ever get the power to go back in time and change things don't change that one. Please."

There was a flurry of motion among the videographers. Admiral Hackett had arrived. There was a man who looked totally comfortable in his dress uniform. Years of practice, or an unnaturally long neck and narrow sides? He smiled and nodded at the cameras and then mounted the steps to the dais. There was a podium along with their chairs. She hoped that she wasn't expected to speak today. But she probably wasn't that lucky.

"Commander, Mrs. Alenko," Admiral Hackett said, nodding at each of them in turn. He went on to greet the other people on the dais, all the friends and family of the crew that could make it, before sitting down next to Shepard. Cortez had looked very gratified to get personally greeted by an Admiral. Miranda just looked smug. The whole gang was out in force today. She remembered Kaidan saying that after everything was over, there was going to be a hell of a reunion party. Dancing and crying, hugging in the streets. They weren't in the streets but she had no doubt that the rest of his prediction was spot on.

"Commander, I have a problem," Admiral Hackett said. His voice was very quiet. His face was resting in a benign smile. No doubt it looked like he was just making small talk. But she wasn't that good of an actress. Her surprise had to be showing on her face.

"What's that, sir?" she asked. What the hell happened now?

"I've got krogan and rachni that want to expand into our territory," he said. "I've got millions of civilians still without access to power or to clean water. The council wants to move the Citadel back to where it used to be, but they want us to help pay for it. Like we brought it here. I've got turians and salarians and krogan all arguing just off the edges of my borders."

"Yes. Sir?" Where the hell was he going with this?

"Commander, I need someone to go put out these fires that are brewing. They're always going to be brewing. We just have to keep snuffing them out. I was thinking of taking the Normandy and making it a mobile command center. Just like we originally planned," Admiral Hackett said.

 _You're not taking my freaking ship._

Except it was his ship, actually. Where did that leave her?

"I need an Ambassador. Someone to promote our interests before the Council, out in the galactic community. I would like it to be you," he said. Oh, he wasn't taking her ship away. He was offering it back to her. "But maybe you're enjoying this extended vacation you're calling rehabilitation. Do you want to retire, Commander?"

It took her several moments to think of how to phrase her answer.

"Sir," she said. "If I have to sit still in one place for another day I think I'll go mad. I'd be honored to be your Ambassador."

"Good," Admiral Hackett said, leaning back. "But you know the Normandy has a solid two weeks of repair ahead of her. You're going to be spending a lot of time in front of the cameras until then."

"Worth it," she muttered. She was going to say more, but the faint sound of docking clamps grinding into place stopped her cold. This dock didn't have big picture windows or mass effect field barriers. She couldn't see the Normandy. But there weren't any other ships scheduled to dock.

She stood up. Little camera drones flew around her face. But they didn't block her view. The airlock door was only ten meters away. It took forever for those doors to open.

 _There they are._

Her heart lifted. She could see everyone, everyone who was on the Normandy when it got to Omega. They were grinning, a little surprised to see the party in the docking bay.

She took one step, and then another. She'd imagined maybe saluting them. Very dignified. Or going down the row and shaking their hands like a proper senior officer. But Kaidan was striding toward her like he'd plow through an Atlas if it dropped in his path.

She met him halfway. His arms were warm around her sides, his shoulders wonderfully solid under her hands. Her lips found his. And then there was only the feel of him, the pounding of her heart, the warmth of his chest against hers.

Somewhere very far away there was cheering, and hooting, and what sounded like some very ribald comments. But none of that mattered. It was like coming out of a dark and narrow foxhole into the light of day.

He pulled away far enough to rest his forehead against hers. Little biotic pulses danced off him and around her. Like he was leaking lightning. She'd only seen him do that once before. It was a sure sign of his fragile hold on self-control. But she didn't mind in the least. She was pretty out of control herself.

"Never leave me behind again," he said. She laughed, but it sounded more like a sob. _Get a grip, Commander._

"Careful what you wish for. Hackett just asked me to be an Ambassador," she said. It was better than saying all the dippy, sappy things that flowed through her mind half words and half just emotion. Maybe later, in private, she'd air some of those thoughts out. He would probably like that.

"Good. I was a little afraid you'd want to retire," he smiled. What the hell. She'd already made out with him like a teen bride reunited with her ensign. She kissed him again.

"Never. I was afraid _you'd_ want to retire," she said.

"I do want to take you to see the family orchard," he said. "But no. Wherever you go, I'm with you. Unless you decide you don't want me around."

"Would you two get a room already? Some of us have people to kiss too, you know." That sounded like Vega. The both ignored him. But, now that the initial rush of seeing him was fading, it was a little bit embarrassing how she'd run up to him like that. In front of the Admiral. And his mother. And whoever would watch the vid recording. Until the end of time.

Okay, now she could feel herself blushing. She stepped back, smoothing the front of his uniform with her palms. He watched her pull away, his dark eyes grave. Maybe he thought she was pulling away because of what he'd said.

"That's never going to happen," she said. "I definitely want you to come with me."

The corner of his mouth ticked up. _I love you._ She couldn't say it in front of so many people. Not yet. She could barely bring herself to say it at all. It was all new to her. But with a little practice, maybe it would come easier.

And now they had time. All the time in the world.

She let him go hug his mother and turned to her crew. Vega shouldered to the front and caught her up in a big bear hug, ending with a resounding, smacking kiss on her cheek. Liara and Tali also came in for hugs. Garrus was more reserved. She didn't press him, but she did grin. He was the only one managing to retain his dignity. Even Engineer Adams, after watching Tali and Liara, held out his arms for an embrace.

Joker was the last one out of the airlock. His smile was a little lopsided, his face a little strained. He saluted her. She saluted back. Then she hugged him. Gently, so she wouldn't rattle his fragile bones.

"I didn't realize we were at the hugging stage, Commander," Joker said. He was clearly embarrassed. She just grinned at him.

"What girl could resist hugging the best helmsman in the galaxy?" she asked. He stood a little straighter.

"That's a good point," he said. They both stood back and watched the media circus begin. Or continue. Kaidan had been dragged to the podium and was standing next to Admiral Hackett. The Admiral was giving a very stern military-style speech to the cameras. And Kaidan looked every inch the second human Spectre. Capable, respectable. Not at all the sort of man who kissed a fellow officer in a docking bay in front of the whole galaxy.

She was never going to live that down.

"We got all this good press, but what's going to happen with the Normandy now?" Joker said. "Without a war on she might become some kind of civilian ship. Are we going to let that happen?"

"I know exactly what's in store for the Normandy," said Shepard. "Admiral Hackett just made me a very interesting offer. How do you feel about being helmsman for a mobile command center?"

Liara, standing nearby, heard her say it. And she smiled, too.

"Room for a lowly information broker?" she asked, very quietly. Shepard almost laughed out loud.

"Oh, I think we'll find room for everyone."


End file.
